Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has started honing his sights on GOP rival Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in recent days, saying on Thursday that Mr. Rubio is a “kid” who shouldn’t be in the 2016 race.
“Marco Rubio, he’s like a kid — he shouldn’t even be running in this race as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Trump, 69, said of Mr. Rubio, 44, on CNN’s “New Day.” “He’s a kid.”
“He’s got the worst voting record in the United States Senate. He’s never there, meaning he doesn’t work, or he’s too lazy to go back and vote,” Mr. Trump said. “Marco Rubio wants to tell every single thing that he knows to everybody so that the people on the other side, so that the enemy can learn all about it.”
“I want to be unpredictable,” Mr. Trump said. “I know more about Syria than Marco Rubio knows about Syria. I know about us beating ISIS and us knocking out ISIS or trying to knock out ISIS, and yet ISIS wants to go against Assad and Assad, frankly, is looking at us and saying, ’I can’t believe it. The Americans are killing my enemy. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.’ “
The line about Mr. Rubio’s voting and attendance was one Mr. Trump used in the second GOP debate, and Mr. Rubio has said he’s never missed a vote where he would make a difference but that frustration with Washington is part of the reason why he’s running for president and not for re-election.
The show had also played a clip of Mr. Rubio saying that Mr. Trump hasn’t really answered “serious questions” about national security and that businesswoman and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina knows more about it than he does.
“Look, Marco Rubio sits behind a desk sometimes and he reads stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s all he does. I create jobs all day long. I’ll know more about this than all of ’em put together and believe me, we’ll have a winning strategy.”
“If Marco Rubio’s good, how come we’re doing so badly? He’s a sitting U.S. senator. Why doesn’t he do something about it?” he said. “I’m not in government. He is in government.”
Mr. Trump also said Mr. Rubio was “very disloyal” to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another 2016 GOP contender.
“Bush was his mentor, and everyone said he’d never run because Bush was his mentor,” he said. “Well, the fact that Bush was his mentor didn’t stop this young guy who’s overly ambitious from wanting to run. Now Bush looks foolish, and he looks like he’s a very disloyal guy.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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