Florida Senator Marco Rubio suspended his campaign for president in a speech in Miami, FL on Tuesday.
Rubio began by congratulating fellow candidate Donald Trump for his win in Florida and thanking his team and voters, Rubio said, “America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami, and we should have seen this coming. Look, people are angry, and people are very frustrated.”
After a heckler interrupted, Rubio quipped that he wouldn’t get beaten up at this event.
He later added, “[T]he easiest thing to have done in this campaign is to jump on all those anxieties I just talked about, to make people angry, or make people more frustrated, but I chose a different route, and I’m proud of that. That would’ve been — that — in a year like this, that would’ve been the easiest way to win. but that is not what’s best for America. The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party, they’re going to leave us a fractured nation. They’re going to leave us as a nation where people literally hate each other, because they have different political opinions. … I know that after eight years of Barack Obama, this nation needs a vibrant and growing conservative movement, and it needs a strong Republican Party, to change the direction now of this country, or many of the things that are going wrong in America will become permanent.”
Rubio later said, after arguing the country also needs a new political establishment, and criticized the establishment for looking down on people outside of DC and criticizing conservatives, “I take great comfort in the ancient words, which teaches us, that in their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps. And so yet, while this may not have been the year for a hopeful and optimistic message about our future, I still remain hopeful and optimistic about America. And how can I not? My mother was one of seven girls born to a poor family. … I consider my parents to be very successful people, because in this country, working hard as a bartender and a maid, they owned a home, and they retired with dignity. In this country, they lived to see all four of their children live better off than themselves. And in this country, on this day, my mother, who’s now 85 years old, was able to cast a ballot for her son to be the president of the United States of America.”
Rubio concluded, “And so, while it is not God’s plan that I be president in 2016, or maybe ever. And while today my campaign is suspended, the fact that I’ve even come this far is evidence of how special America truly is, and all the reason more why we must do all we can to ensure that this nation remains a special place. I ask the American people, do not to give in to the fear. Do not give in to the frustration. We can disagree about public policy, we can disagree about it vibrantly, passionately, but we are hopeful people, and we have every right to be hopeful. For we in this nation are the descendants of go-getters. In our veins, runs the blood of people who gave it all up, so we would have the chances they never did. We are all the descendants of someone who made our future the purpose of their lives. We are the descendants of Pilgrims. We are the descendants of settlers. We are the descendants of men and women that headed westward in the Great Plains, not knowing what awaited them. We are the descendants of slaves, who overcame that horrible institution to stake their claim in the American Dream. We are the descendants of immigrants and exiles, who knew and believed that they were destined for more, and that there was only one place on earth where that was possible. This is who we are. And let us fight to ensure this is who we remain. For if we lose that about our country, we’ll still be rich, and we’ll still be powerful, but we will no longer be special.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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