Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript: Interview with Marco Rubio

Interview

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Here with reaction, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

You're on the intel community, Senator. I read -- I went back and looked at
a lot of your tweets. You had -- you warned them this would fail. You told
them exactly what would happen.

They ignored everything that you told them, and others. And the next step
is you predict this will now once again be a safe haven for groups like al
Qaeda moving forward.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Yeah, Sean, not just did I tell them, but it was
a bipartisan warning, okay? You look at the intelligence, you look at
everything before us, it was clear that not only it was the worst case
scenario out there, it was the likeliest outcome that was going to happen,
and we kept insisting, what is the plan of this happens? What is the plan?

And they arrogantly and they smugly ignored it. They ignored everyone who
was warning them because they're the experts, they know everything, and now
we've seen the consequences.

There are two things now to keep in mind. Number one is Joe Biden was
elected promising competence, the return on normalcy, the return of
expertise to foreign policy, and we see that they can't even execute on
something like this and ignore the people who know something about it.

That does encourage people like China -- countries like China and other
adversaries not just to go out and try to undermine confidence in America,
but actually test America and think they can get away with it.

And the other is something that the Pentagon's already saying and we've
already been saying for close to nine months, the biggest problem here is
going to be now that al Qaeda is coming back to Afghanistan, let there be
no doubt. They are coming back. They will reconstitute. They will pose a
threat again and this administration has no plan whatsoever to prevent that
from happening.

HANNITY: China's in -- sorry, Russia is involved in cyber attacks against
this country, then they get a waiver for a pipeline and they get a summit
with Joe Biden.

China is threatening our military bases. They're threatening Japan's
military bases. They're threatening to take over an independent sovereign
country Taiwan. They're calling it reunification, and they're lecturing
America on human rights in Anchorage and our ever pathetically weak
secretary of state is allowing them to do so with no pushback.

So, my question is, why wouldn't the Chinese think that they can take or
reunify their term with Taiwan?

RUBIO: Foreign policy is a very tough business and a lot of it is not made
-- I know it's not made in the parlors of the capitals of the cities. It's
not made in these think tanks. It's not made by the commentary class.

It is hard-nosed nation-states making a decision, what can we get away
with, and if we do this, this -- what's going to happen to us?

And right now, with Joe Biden in the White House, our adversaries are going
to conclude that there are things they can get away with and they can do
because this White House is not strong, they're not prepared, they're not
even competent and I fear what that means. There's a big, big problem.

HANNITY: Isn't it -- it wasn't a difference, we're going to compare. I
know some people were so offended and you know their daily outrage at
Donald Trump's tweeting. But Donald Trump was able to get trade deals that
nobody thought possible because everybody believed that a trade war would
come and that he would follow through.

Our enemies knew and, for example, look at ISIS he defeated the caliphate.
You know, Biden Obama weren't capable of dealing with any such threat. They
don't seem to have -- there's no belief that Joe Biden will lift a finger
to stop anything here, which means these nations, their geopolitical,
geographical ambitions are going to be pursued and likely, they will be
successful.

RUBIO: Yeah, look, the war in Afghanistan had to come to a conclusion.
This couldn't go on forever, but it had to be done the right way. Not this
way. And what this way reveals is you can get away with things with this
administration and they're not going to take it seriously, they're not
going to know what to do about it.

And I look back at the Soleimani strike, and it was widely condemned, it
was called murder and execution. All kinds of people attacking President
Trump for doing it. I assure you, I assure you, a hundred percent, I know
for a fact that it impacted the psychology of the Iranian regime, and of
the group that Soleimani headed. It had an impact on them.

HANNITY: But they feared Trump. They feared him and they believed he was
capable of following through on his threats. That's number one and --

RUBIO: Well, and unfortunately, that's exactly what a lot about foreign
policy is all about is what do your adversaries believe they can get away
with. Not what you're saying, not what you're writing, what do they think
you will do? And the Soleimani strike sent the message. It was important to
do.

The guy was a smug guy that would walk around, fly around with impunity. He
thought he was untouchable until he wasn't. And it had an impact.

There's no fear of that happening under Joe Biden, none.

HANNITY: But the Trump plan was based on conditions on the ground and a
genuine fear that like Donald Trump wiped out the caliphate, that they
would be -- the Taliban would be wiped out similarly if they dare to try
this if Donald Trump was president. This didn't happen on Trump's watch.
This happened on Biden's watch, while Biden was on vacation and couldn't
bother to even take time to deal with it.

RUBIO: Because they operated under assumptions that were completely
ridiculous. The assumption was -- well, what if the Afghans stand up and
fight and really push back. If you make those assumptions -- yeah, they
could have held on for another six months or a year, but all the
indications were that as soon as the U.S. announced, they were leaving,
police officers would abandon post, the regular armed forces would abandon
post, and leaders would abandon the country.

That is exactly what happened. It's what they were told. That's what they
were warned what happened. They didn't care, and now, we see the
consequences of it.

HANNITY: All right. Senator, thank you for being with us.

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