ABC News host Jonathan Karl pressed Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sunday on why he said it would be an “honor” to serve as presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s vice president, bluntly asking, “really?”
“There was some reporting this week, that you are possibly under consideration to be Donald Trump’s running mate. I don’t put a lot of stock in this reporting right now, we’re early, but you said it would be an honor to be offered a spot on this ticket. Really?” Karl asked.
Rubio, R-Fla., said anybody who was given the opportunity to serve as Vice President should be honored to do it “if you’re in public service.”
“I’m in the Senate because I want to serve the country. Being vice president is an important way to serve the country. I’ve also been clear. I’ve never talked to Donald Trump or talked to anybody on his team or family or inner circle about vice president. That’s the decision he’s going to make. He’s got plenty of really good people to pick from,” Rubio added.
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Karl said the reason he was asking was because of what happened to former Vice President Mike Pence.
“Look what happened to the last guy. I mean, a mob stormed the Capitol, literally calling to hang Mike Pence. Trump defended those chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” Karl said.
Rubio said the U.S. was a better place when Trump was president before the two went back and forth over who was to blame for the Russian-Ukraine war.
“Can we take a trip down memory lane for a second?” Karl asked, before playing a clip of Rubio arguing that Trump was a “con artist” in 2016, when he was running against Trump for that year’s nomination.
Rubio pushed back as Karl told him he could have played more clips of Rubio criticizing the former president, which could have also included him saying Trump was dangerous and not trustworthy with the nuclear codes. The feeling was mutual; Trump lambasted Rubio as “Little Marco” and wound up pushing out the establishment favorite by routing him in the primary in his home state of Florida.
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“Why didn’t you play the clip of Kamala Harris basically insinuating that Joe Biden was a segregationist?” Rubio asked, noting the memorable attack by her before she came Biden’s running mate.
Rubio said again, that at the time, he was campaigning for president against Trump.
Trump noted about half a dozen potential running mate choices during a Fox News town hall in February. The list included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a Democrat turned independent.
Rubio said Thursday that being offered the chance to be a presidential running mate would be “an incredible opportunity to serve our country.”
“If anybody has been offered the chance to be vice president, they should consider that an honor and an incredible opportunity to serve our country,” Rubio said Thursday, according to Politico. “But that hasn’t happened, I haven’t spoken to anybody on his campaign about it. Never once have I talked to [Trump] about vice presidency.”
“We’ve had a great working relationship — we ran against each other, so at one point we were competitors — but since 2016, especially when he was president, we worked really well together,” the senator continued, according to Politico.
Fox News’ Timothy Nerozzi contributed to this report.
