Tuesday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) weighed on the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, FL.
According to Rubio, those who immigrated to south Florida from authoritarian-led countries in Latin America were familiar with these kinds of raids and the dangers of government officials attempting to “criminalize” political opposition.
“Look, I’m here in a very unique position in south Florida surrounded by people that come from countries where this is familiar to them,” he said. “This is shocking to Americans, but in Latin America and many of these, you know, countries around the world, here’s what happens — a group takes power. One of the first things that group does is they begin to persecute and go after their political opponents. And then when the supporters of their political opponents begin to complain about it, they begin to target them, and they criminalize opposition.”
“And that’s what’s happening here now,” Rubio continued. “They took power. They are demanding — and you see it on Twitter, you see their public statements, they are demanding. They want Donald Trump arrested. They want him charged right now. They wanted him charged months ago, years ago. They wanted him charged.”
“And I’m telling you the next thing you’re going to see here, Sean, because it’s the playbook, and that is they are now going to begin to say, ‘Oh, these Trump supporters, these Republicans, they’re very upset. They’re saying very angry things. We think they might be a threat. We think they’re radical extremists. Let’s start arresting them.'”
“You’re going — the next step in this process is going to be that people who are supporters of Donald Trump or just conservatives complaining about this are going to begin to get harassed by — are going to begin to get labeled as potential insurrectionists and are going to begin to get harassed by law enforcement,” he added. “That’s the next step in this playbook, sadly.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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