They say presidency ages a man, and I’d wager that a presidential campaign shaves a few years off as well. Marco Rubio, who has literally been crumbling under the weight of Robotgate, looked exhausted after Saturday evening’s CBS GOP debate. Rubio participated in a few clashes throughout the night, including the moment when he accused Ted Cruz of not knowing Spanish (which produced a glorious moment of off-camera Donald Trump laughter). In response, Cruz fired off a few phrases proving that, indeed, he knows at least a little bit of the romance language.
Rubio sat down with CNN’s State of the Union program to discuss his allegation. Host Dana Bash asked, “Were you calling into question whether or not Senator Cruz is a real Latino?” Rubio responded that he wasn’t being literal: “No, I was calling into question whether he even knows what I’m saying.” Further, Rubio believes that Cruz didn’t even bother listening to Rubio’s Spanish-language interviews. Why? Rubio thinks Cruz just makes crap up, and he finds it “very disturbing” how often Cruz lies to the public:
“He has no idea. He’s just going off what other people are telling him, and it’s false. It’s just not true … There’s no other way to describe that — it’s a lie. When you say something that’s not true, it’s called a lie. That’s the definition of it … On this campaign, he is saying things that are not true, and he’s saying it repeatedly, and he knows they’re not true.”
Rubio must be serious because he’s repeating himself again. Regardless, audiences will remember how Cruz posed an insincere sounding apology to Ben Carson after Cruz staffers pulled a slimy campaign tactic. On Saturday evening, Trump also accused Cruz of starting rumors (about Trump pulling out of South Carolina) too. Rubio says enough is more than enough:
“The bottom line is, there’s been this disturbing pattern the last couple of weeks of Ted Cruz saying things that are not true. Just in the last week, he’s lied about my record on marriage. He’s lied about my record on Planned Parenthood. Of course he lied about Ben Carson in Iowa. Last night Donald Trump says he’s issuing robocalls, doing the same thing to him. And then he also isn’t telling the truth about immigration.”
Rubio used the rest of the interview to hammer home his belief that President Obama should not replace Justice Antonin Scalia. That’s a predictable argument (and one that won’t be settled for awhile), so let’s relive the Spanish-language diss that will live on in infamy.
https://youtu.be/JDXczRDJJ4c
(Via CNN)