Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) during a Thursday appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show, lamented the invasion of politics into the space of national security issues, particularly the opposition of Democratic members of Congress and the media to President Donald Trump’s actions regarding the kill of Qasam Soleimani.
Rubio explained how there was once a time those political differences were not part of national security debates but added that times had changed.
“I can’t say I’m shocked, honestly, because I think this is a, there used to be a time where we had political differences and even political derangement, but it always seemed to be that national security was the one place where we would kind of take off the table in that regard,” he said. “That’s no longer the case. I’ll give you a case and point. You know, one of the, at the crux of part of the argument against the President in this whole impeachment thing is, and you see it in the testimony that the Democrats in the House offered, is you know, he, all of these experts, these career experts thought what the President was doing was wrong, OK?”
“And irrespective of what, you know, the policy decisions involved in it and so forth, that’s what they keep rolling out, that career person after career person and the experts think that the President, what he is doing is wrong,” Rubio continued. “Well, here you have a case in which his entire national security team, everybody, the CIA director, the Director of National Intelligence, the Defense Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, all, and the Secretary of State, all of them, all of them said Soleimani is on the verge of carrying out a near-term catastrophic attack against Americans. We have a window of opportunity to disrupt it, now or never. And the President listened to his experts and took action. And so by the way, they heard this directly. So it doesn’t shock me anymore to see people go into a briefing, are told to their face by General Milley I believed it was a near-term imminent attack, I believe what we did was right based on my 40 years of experience, and then they walk out, and they basically say we heard nothing to indicate that this is justified.”
Rubio added, “So they’re calling General Milley a liar. They’re also contradicting themselves, because the President did what his leaders told him to do, and I think it’s indicative of a broader sort of derangement that’s kicked in, in American politics, that has now sadly spread into national security matters.”
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