Days before he is scheduled to announce he is running for President in Miami, Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), gave an exclusive interview to Breitbart News. Among the topics discussed were the Senator’s foreign policy views and his reaction to the news that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) is expected to announce her own campaign on Sunday.
When asked if he thought Clinton was “trying to steal his thunder” by making her announcement the day before his, Rubio replied that he did not think it mattered very much when someone made an announcement, but what would have far more importance would be the reason why someone was running.
“What is her agenda going to be?” asked Rubio. “Is she going to be a continuance of what we have now, which is not what the American people want? What’s the difference between her and the current administration?”
“We’re talking about someone who was this architect of failed foreign policy,” said Rubio about Clinton, who was Secretary of State in the Obama administration during a number of national security crises, most notably the September 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans.
Clinton is currently the front-runner among the potential Democratic presidential candidates by a wide margin, and polls over the past few months have shown her leading the Republican field. However, as Breitbart News reported, a poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) conducted at the end of March showed that Clinton’s lead had shrunk since February. And while she enjoys high name recognition, she also has high unfavorability numbers too.
In that PPP poll, Rubio, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) were the top three performers against Clinton, with statistically identical results: Clinton led Rubio 46 percent to 43 percent, and Walker and Paul 46 percent to 42 percent. As Breitbart News noted, the polling sample may have been skewed in favor of Democrats.
Rubio went on to criticize President Barack Obama’s Cuba policy. Obama has been far more conciliatory toward the Castro regime than previous presidents and Rubio, whose parents were born in Cuba, has been one of the loudest voices attacking him for it. As Breitbart News’ Frances Martel has reported, Obama is currently rumored to be considering removing Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
“It’s ridiculous,” Rubio says. “I don’t see how they can rationalize taking them off the list, other than the president’s desire to achieve a legacy issue that he’s the one that opened up Cuba and changed fifty years of policy.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he continued, noting Cuba is “harboring the fugitives of American justice, including the killer of an American police officer, and dozens of people who have stolen millions of dollars from Medicare — fraud from the American taxpayer.”
As Breitbart Texas reported, Assata Shakur, also known as JoAnne Chesimard, escaped from prison in 1979 where she was being held for her role in the killing of a New Jersey State Trooper. She fled to Cuba and has been evading extradition ever since. The FBI added Shakur to the Top Ten Most Wanted Terrorists List in 2013, the first woman to ever make that list.
Cuba has also been caught twice in the last few years helping North Korea evade weapons sanctions, said Rubio, and “they continue to provide shelter and material support for terrorist groups like the FARC in Columbia and others. This is the country that is the third most active espionage force in America today, operating against us, [and also has] military officials who have been indicted in federal court for the murder of U.S. citizens over international waters.”
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter @rumpfshaker.
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