Rubio Goes ‘The Full Marco’ on Sunday Shows Ahead of South Carolina

Marco Rubio (Chip Somodevilla / Getty)
Chip Somodevilla / Getty

After his disappointing performance in Iowa and his dismal showing in New Hampshire, Marco Rubio seems eager to resurrect his campaign by hitting all five Sunday shows this weekend.

However, this is not the first time Rubio has appeared on all five Sunday shows in one day. In 2013, when Rubio was pushing his Obama-endorsed amnesty bill through the Senate, Rubio did all five shows plus Univision and Telemundo— prompting the press to dub his media tour “The Full Marco”.

According to Politico’s Playbook, whichever Sunday show Americans tune into this weekend, they will hear Marco Rubio’s message. It may perhaps strike some as bizarre that every Sunday show has booked on its program a candidate who finished in third place in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire. Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly has previously said of the media’s treatment of Rubio, “They’re protecting him.”

Politico reports that the Sunday show line-ups are as follows:

NBC’s Meet the Press: Donald Trump (live from Florida); Marco Rubio; John Kasich; roundtable: Chris Cillizza, Ron Fournier, Gwen Ifill, Kathleen Parker, and Al Sharpton

ABC’s This Week: John Kasich; Marco Rubio; Bernie Sanders; roundtable: Matt Bai, LZ Granderson, Bill Kristol, and Ana Navarro

CBS’s Face the Nation: Donald Trump; Marco Rubio; Bernie Sanders; roundtable: Jamelle Bouie, Peggy Noonan, Dan Balz, and Kimberley Strassel; new results from the CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker Poll with Anthony Salvanto (airing live from Greenville, SC)

Fox News Sunday: Marco Rubio; Bernie Sanders; roundtable: George Will, David Gregory, Kristen Soltis Anderson, and Juan Williams

CNN’s State of the Union (9am ET / 12pm ET): Jeb Bush; Marco Rubio; roundtable: Donna Brazile, Hugh Hewitt, Kellyanne Conway, and Bill Press (substitute anchor: CNN’s Dana Bash)

Rubio’s upcoming media tour to boost his campaign appears reminiscent of his 2013 media tour to sell the Gang of Eight bill.

As the Washington Post has previously reported, after the Rubio-Schumer bill was introduced, it was Rubio’s job to sell the bill:

He did Limbaugh. He did Hannity. He did private meetings with influential conservative activists and writers. And on April 14, 2013, Rubio did the talking-head version of an ultramarathon: all five Sunday chat shows in one day, a rarely completed feat known as the “Full Ginsburg” (after the lawyer for Monica Lewinsky, who was the first to do it, in the 1990s). And then Rubio did two more, on Telemundo and Univision, in Spanish. “The Full Marco!” Politico called it.

However, as Mark Krikorian noted at the time, throughout his “Full Marco,” Rubio made numerous blatant misrepresentations about his bill intended to “fool” voters.

As Krikorian wrote two years ago:

Rubio on Sunday managed a “Full Ginsburg” — appearing on all five Sunday talk shows on the same day. In fact, he established a new benchmark, perhaps from now on to be called the “Full Rubio,” because he also appeared on the Sunday news/interview programs of the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. There wasn’t any ambivalence in his performance; it seems certain he’s going to stick with the amnesty bill expected out this week under almost any circumstances. He was not only aggressively making his case but, in addition to familiar talking points, he made a couple of new ones that were so obviously ridiculous that I can’t see how he could possibly believe them.

Unless he’s an idiot, which I do not think to be the case, he’s trying to fool voters, not persuade them. First, a familiar talking point: the bill doesn’t provide amnesty. For crisssake, of course it’s amnesty! Stop lying!

To this day, Rubio still maintains that his 2013 bill, which would have granted citizenship to illegals, was not amnesty and that he has never supported amnesty.

Krikorian continued:

Last among the ridiculous claims Rubio delivered with a straight face was his claim to Crowley that his bill wasn’t really a ‘comprehensive’ bill at all, because it was made up of separate parts:

‘First of all, that’s my preference too is to have done that in individual bills. I’ve argued that in the past. That’s not the direction the Senate was headed. So I made a decision to try to influence the direction we were headed. But here’s what I’m pleased about. Even though it’s one bill, it is divided up into segments just like Senator Lee has advocated for and so have I. And the fact of the matter is that through our negotiations we’ve been able to keep these segments separate from each other.’

Uh, all bills are made of segments, especially 1,000-page monstrosities like this Rubio-care immigration proposal. The claim that dividing the bill into sections — titles, as they’re usually known — means separate bills will be presented that address, say, enforcement and guestworkers and amnesty, has a Baghdad Bob feel to it.”

Krikorian also pointed out the questions the moderators failed to ask Rubio:

Rubio told David Gregory on Meet the Press that ‘even if we didn’t have a single person in this country in violation of immigration laws, we’d still have to do immigration reform, because our legal immigration system is broken’ (meaning we don’t let enough people in). Gregory didn’t think to ask why the 1 million-plus green cards (and hundreds of thousands of “temporary” worker visas) that we award each year aren’t enough. The L.A. Times estimates that under the proposed Schumer/Rubio bill legal immigration would jump by more than 50 percent, making those less-discussed parts of the measure probably the most consequential over the long term. That’s where some informed probing by the news media might shed some light, but the only person trying was Senator Jeff Sessions, while a guest on ABC’s This Week.

Krikorian concluded: “Maybe the next time Rubio does a Full Ginsburg someone will think to ask him.”

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