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Miami, FL — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss the Democratic National Convention, China, the recently released Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan Russia report, and more. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here.
On the Democratic National Convention:
“It’s going to be a close, hard-fought election. I think there’s going to be a clear choice. I personally do not believe that Joe Biden has the strength to confront the major challenges this country is facing— whether it’s China, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s the need to rebalance our trade relationships and rebuild our economy and have an industrial capacity once again in this country that’s stronger than what we have now.”
On China:
“The relationship between the U.S. and China is going to define the 21st-century and whether we get it right or not is going to determine what kind of country we are, what kind of country our children are going to have. And I think the reason why it’s not being discussed [at the DNC convention] is, frankly, Joe Biden has been part of that bipartisan consensus that’s existed for 30 years of belief that once China got rich they would start following the rules and become a democracy and it didn’t work out. And now we’re paying a terrible price for it.”
On the Senate’s bipartisan report on Russian interference in the 2016 election:
“It was over 200 interviews, over a million pages of documents, it was passed overwhelmingly by a bipartisan majority … On the FBI piece of it, it is actually very troubling. What you have here is a document prepared by a foreigner, relying on foreign sources, not vetted, the CIA told the FBI ‘do not rely on this document, this document does not meet any of the standards that we look for when talking about gathering information,’ and they relied on it anyways.
“And the piece that everyone’s missing is they were shopping that document around in October of 2016. And no one — to their credit, I don’t often say this — every outlet in America turned it down. They said ‘we don’t know what that is.’ And it was only after the FBI gave it credibility and relied on it and told people we think there might be some truth to this that you saw it being reported, and then BuzzFeed published the whole thing.
“And it’s a frightening thing because what it means is, from now anybody can hire someone to go out — maybe a foreign intelligence agency — prepare some document that claims to have all this information about a candidate, put it out there in the public domain because somebody in a federal agency doesn’t like you, and you don’t have time to defend yourself against it — later on it’s disproven — but it’s too late the election is over.
“So, perhaps the most concrete foreign interference effort that we saw in 2016 — and the other ones were very serious, let there be no doubt, the Russians did meddle and continue to meddle, along with Iran and China — but the one we can point to and say ‘the one that hasn’t been talked about enough that was a piece of foreign interference’ was [the Steele] dossier.
“It wasn’t just the origins, it’s the sources it relied on — it was relying on other foreign sources. In essence, we may never be able to prove it, but I can tell you if a foreign government decided ‘we are going to introduce disinformation into a campaign,’ this is a tactic they could use… It’s a very dangerous precedent, and I think the FBI…and those individuals responsible for that need to be held to account. I’m glad to see some of them are starting to be held to account by the Justice Department.”
On American Airlines suspending 700 flights:
“It is very damaging — not just to the airports, the vendors, the people that work for the airlines, the ground crews,and everybody that does work there — obviously for tourism and travel. Where we are on this deal is very simple: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have decided that as of now, doing nothing is better for them politically.”
Watch the full interview here.