Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio released a new campaign ad slamming President Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) for spying on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though he defended the practice in a private conversation behind the scenes.
“Instead of fighting to fund our troops, he fights to fund Planned Parenthood,” Rubio says in the ad, referring to Obama. “He spies on Israel, and cut a deal with Iran.”
But as Breitbart News exclusively reported from a back room at the Royal Amsterdam Hotel in Pella, Iowa, last week, Rubio told his ally Rep. Trey Gowdy that the issue was complicated and not really a big deal.
“We spy on everyone,” Rubio told Gowdy, defending the practice of spying on a U.S. ally. “That’s the nature of intelligence.”
“It’s more complicated than the [WSJ] story makes it seem,” Rubio added.
Gowdy responded that people are upset because the U.S. decided to stop spying on leaders of Germany and some other nations, but still spies on Israel.
Nevertheless, Rubio went ahead and criticized the practice on Fox News and has now apparently made his public opposition to spying on Israel a plank in his political ads. Rubio has locked up the support of neoconservative donor Paul Singer and is competing for the endorsement of onetime Bush ally Sheldon Adelson, a neoconservative billionaire.
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