Rubio waited until after Capitol attack to say politicians lied to Trump rioters

Alex Daugherty

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Friday in a video that the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol were “lied to by politicians who were telling them that the vice president had the power to change the election results.”

But in the days before the attack that appalled the world and resulted in five deaths, Rubio made no public effort to counter what he now calls a lie pushed by politicians he didn’t name. Nor would he talk when asked this week about a last-ditch attempt by his fellow Senate Republicans to overturn the election by blocking President-elect Joe Biden’s formal certification, though he later voted against it.

And he said nothing when, hours before the riot, President Donald Trump tweeted as riled-up caravans of his supporters headed to Washington that “if Vice President Mike Pence comes through for us, we will win the presidency.”

On Friday, Rubio wouldn’t explain why he didn’t speak up about what he now says is a falsehood, pushed by politicians he won’t name, in the days before the attack on the Capitol. His office said he had no comment.

In the video posted to Twitter and YouTube, Rubio — a leader in the Republican Party who ran for president against Trump in the primary and continues to harbor presidential ambitions — tried to present a way forward for the party, framing a “center right” position and criticizing the violence but not calling out Trump specifically.

He insisted that “99 percent” of the Trump supporters who came to Washington weren’t part of the violent mob. He argued that the media’s coverage of violent protests related to the death of George Floyd drove more Americans to embrace conspiracy theories and violence, and tried to rally Republicans to stand together to be an “attractive alternative to the agenda of the radical left.”

“And we can do all these things without indulging the darkest instincts or inciting the most destructive impulses — and without the rhetoric or behavior that keep the millions of Americans who agree with us from joining us in this fight,” Rubio said.

He also called on the party to reflect on why it no longer controls the White House, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Many Democrats and some Republicans are increasingly calling for Trump to be removed from office before his term ends on Jan. 20, though Rubio is not in favor of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office before Biden’s inauguration.

But as Rubio, based in a state that supported Trump, tried to carve out a path forward — for himself and his party — the GOP unanimously reelected Ronna McDaniel, the Trump-backed Republican National Committee leader who oversaw the election losses. Trump announced Friday that he will not attend the inauguration. And militant supporters of the president vowed more violence during next weekend’s peaceful transition of power.

In the video, Rubio tried to make the case for calm in the fight against the left, though he quotes disgraced President Richard Nixon to make his point, noting that Nixon said political enemies who hate you “don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

“We can’t destroy ourselves,” Rubio said in the message. “It wasn’t long ago that we controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. And, four years later, we’ve lost all three.”

Where Rubio fits into the hierarchy of the future party is uncertain. He’s distanced himself from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the ringleaders of the electoral college effort. He didn’t vote with them, like Florida Sen. Rick Scott did, though Scott said Friday he wants Trump to attend Biden’s inauguration. Rubio also hasn’t criticized his GOP colleagues by name or suggested that Trump is unfit for office, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham or Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.

In a Fox News interview on Thursday evening, Rubio called using the 25th Amendment to force Trump from office a “waste of time.”

He also said he was “really disappointed” in Biden’s speech on Thursday, where the president-elect contrasted the treatment of Wednesday’s rioters to protesters involved in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations last summer.

“If it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they would have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said. “We all know that’s true. And it’s unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.”

Rubio’s video message, though, was focused on the GOP, and what he sees as the need to focus more on the working class and less on corporations while continuing to challenge the left and mainstream media.

“We shouldn’t, and we can’t, go back to the party of 2012 — a party that was frankly out of touch with the unheard voices of millions of working Americans,” Rubio said. “We must continue to fight for working Americans, not for corporations. We welcome legal immigrants, but we have to enforce our laws.”

But it’s unclear what the future in the Republican Party looks like for anyone who wasn’t all in for Trump, especially for Republicans in Florida, where Trump won by a comfortable margin.

Even the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters didn’t dislodge most of Trump’s staunchest allies from the Sunshine State. The majority of Florida Republicans continued to back Trump’s electoral challenge. Thirteen of the Florida’s 15 House Republicans — including former Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez — voted to challenge the election results in both Arizona and Pennsylvania.

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