Attention Republicans. Senator Marco Rubio delivered a master class on how to interview on a legacy news channel, or any news channel, for that matter.
Rubio was a guest on Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC. As host Kristen Welker tried to pin him down about accepting the results of the 2024 presidential election in November, “no matter what,” Rubio turned the tables on her.
He simply refused to let Welker get away with pretending it is Republicans who are the election deniers when Democrats have a long history of such behavior. “No matter what happens? No! If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested by each side.”
Welker tried again. She re-worded the question but Rubio wasn’t having it. “You’re asking the wrong person. The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000. Every single one.”
Democrats are never asked about election denial on their side of the aisle, though that is where election denial usually comes from. It has accelerated since 2000 and continues today. Donald Trump was the first Republican candidate to seriously question the results of a presidential election and much of that had to do with some squirrely moves made due to the pandemic. Democrats took advantage of the pandemic and changed election rules, especially in big blue areas, including my own city of Houston.
Democrats and their partners in the media want to deny Republicans the ability to question election results, which is a legitimate right. In America, we can question election results.
In pointing out that Democrats are election deniers, Rubio posted a montage of Democrats doing that on his X account. These aren’t fringe Democrats, he used examples of prominent Democrats. He pinned the tweet at the top of his page.
When will the media start asking Democrats if they will accept the outcome of the 2024 election if Trump wins? pic.twitter.com/9kGf9O3sTF
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 19, 2024
Democrat media hosts don’t ask Democrats about election denial. Rubio pushed back and it was great.
“What undermines elections is when NBC News, and every major news outlet in the country in 2020, censored the Biden laptop story, which turned out to be true…You couldn’t even talk about it on social media, they would deplatform you,” Rubio said.
Rubio set Welker straight on several topics, including illegal immigration. He supports Trump’s deportation plans and other measures to secure the southern border.
Welker tried to downplay the alarming number of illegal aliens already in our country. Rubio pushed back.
“If re-elected, Donald Trump has said he’s willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military to deport the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country,” Welker said. “It would be the largest deportation operation in American history. Do you support that plan?”
“There’s been almost 10 million people that have entered this country unlawfully in the last three years,” he added.
Rubio rightly said it would take “dramatic action” to secure the border. Her question was meant to make Trump look like an extremist but Rubio gave her facts. Welker thought Rubio would disagree with a more aggressive approach because of his work in 2013 to reform immigration law. She was wrong. That was then. This is now. Circumstances on the ground have changed.
“So, why have you changed your mind now?” she asked, in what had probably been conceived as a “gotcha” moment but only really made her look like an unprepared interviewer.
“Because the issue has completely changed,” Rubio said confidently. “When I said that, [and] back in 2013 when I was involved in immigration reform, we had 11, 12 million people that had been here for longer than a decade. Now we’ve had almost the number in the last three years alone.”
Watch:
WATCH: In 2016, @SenMarcoRubio (R-Fla.) said Donald Trump’s mass-deportation proposals weren’t “realistic.” @kwelkernbc: “Why have you changed your mind now?”
Rubio: “The issue has completely changed. … This is mass migration … and it needs to be dealt with dramatically.” pic.twitter.com/Dj7AMBNvdM
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 19, 2024
Push back, Republicans. Stop being so nice and allowing Democrats to do their gotcha questions to control the narrative. Several times during the interview, Rubio refused to let her move on when she didn’t like his answers. He stayed on the topic until he finished his responses.
Rubio won the Sunday political shows this week. The second runner-up was Senator J.D. Vance who was a guest on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Watch as Vance makes the case for Trump’s re-election.
Senator J.D. Vance puts on a master class on how to deal with the left-wing media during an in-studio interview with Margaret Brennan. pic.twitter.com/sdBxJhzcZK
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 20, 2024
I hope this is a trend. Republicans have to stand up and hold the line against Democrats in the media. When Republicans agree to appear on these shows, they have to know that the interviews will be full of gotcha questions and phony accusations. This will be especially important as we move toward November. Biden is doing badly and Democrats are panicked. The talking points issued by the DNC to Democrats in the media will be non-stop.
Republican lawmakers should watch both interviews. Then they should do as Rubio and Vance did.