'This Week' Transcript 3-24-24: Sen. Marco Rubio & Vice President Kamala Harris

Interview

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Thank you.

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Yes. I mean they've claimed responsibility. They were warned this was going to happen. ISIS-K, ISIS-Khorasan, is largely the Afghan wing of ISIS. It's reconstituted itself as we warned would happen when we had this disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. One of the reasons why we didn't want to withdraw precipitously is because you gave them operating space to reorganize themselves and plan externally. And since that time they've attacked inside of Afghanistan.

They're responsible for the Abby Gate, the loss of 13 Americans, and at – service people right outside the gate of the airport. They conducted an attack inside of Iran not too long ago, and now this one in Russia.

And they'll do it here in the homeland. And we’re very – I think we should be very concerned as the FBI director confirmed to me that there is a wing – there is a trafficking network out there that specializes in moving people. They do it for profit, moving people and migrants around the world, including across our southern border who have links to ISIS.

I think common sense tells you, if they run a trafficking network of people, they would most certainly use it to move operatives into the United States. So, I'm not claiming there’s an imminent threat to the U.S., but I am saying that border situation and that existence of that network is a threat to the United States. If they could do what they did in Moscow in the United States, they would do it in a heartbeat. They want to do it.

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Well, they’re -- if you think back to the end of 2020 under the Trump administration, ISIS was basically out of business. I mean, they were -- they were down to less than a thousand fighters or so forth. And now, they've reconstituted themselves.

And part of it is, once we leave Afghanistan and we're no longer there to conduct regular strikes, they can now operate openly. No matter how much the Taliban wants to take them on, they can't. They don't have the capability to do it.

And these guys have found a place to operate from. They need real estate. They need land and places where they can organize and do external plotting.

Now, it’s a lot easier for them to get into Iran. It’s a lot easier for them to get into Russia and do these things.

But their aspirations go beyond Russia and Iran. They would love to do what they did in Moscow here inside the United States. And it's something we have to be very vigilant about when we have a border in which 9 million people have come across in the last three years.

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Well, I continue to do everything that I can from my end to keep it from becoming that.

I’ll be frank. I think the president is worried about losing Minnesota and Michigan. He's getting a lot of pressure from the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party, a lot of activists and people like that.

You know, he's getting heckled at speeches. He's hearing a lot of complaints and so, I think he's trying to have it both ways, still stick with Israel to some extent, but also do things that signal to these people and try to appease them.

I saw yesterday, Secretary Blinken was overseas. Protesters outside of his hotel. I saw at the State of the Union where these pro-Hamas people were trying to block the president from getting to the State of the Union. They’re under a lot of political pressure and that’s what’s happening here.

But Israel has to win. They have 90,000 displaced Israelis in their own country just in the northern region because of Hezbollah, and who’s going to move back to any of these kibbutzes near Gaza unless Hamas is eliminated? You cannot have a country in which this threat continues to exist. They have to finish this job.

And this fighting can end tomorrow. You want a ceasefire in Gaza, it's very simple. Hamas, just surrender.

No one is calling for Hamas to surrender and lay down their arms. That would end the conflict. That would end the conflict immediately.

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Look. I think there's an argument -- there's a difference between being, you know, pro-Israel, and there are people, you know, being your religion and being pro-Israel can be two separate things. And then there’s people that are pro-Israel but maybe don't like Netanyahu, or what have you.

At the end of the day, my view of it is pretty consistent, and that is if you are out here, if you are claiming, if you are on the side of anyone who wants Israel to stop, in my view, given the realities of the world, if you want Israel to stop, what it basically means is that Hamas will continue to be able to threaten Israel, and so will Hezbollah.

This is not a fight over land. This is not a territorial dispute. This is an existential battle.

And anyone who doesn’t understand that is, frankly, whether they know it or not, an enemy of Israel, unless on the side of what could lead to the destruction of the Jewish state and that is something that I think is untenable. And I hope people will reconsider that are out there arguing that Israel should somehow stop at this point.

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I think anyone who is offered the opportunity to serve this country as vice president should be honored by the opportunity to do it if you are in public service. I’m in the Senate because I want to serve the country. Being vice president is an important way to serve the country.

But I’ve also been clear. I’ve never talked to Donald Trump. I’ve never talked to anybody on his team or family or inner circle about vice president. That's the decision he's going to make. He has plenty of really good people to pick from.

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Listen --

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I will tell you this, that when Donald Trump was president of the United States, this country was safer. It was more prosperous. We had -- we had relations, for example, in a part of the world that I care about called the Western Hemisphere that we’re very strong, we had a lot of good things done there.

I think the country and the world was at a better place when he was president, and I would love to see him return to the White House compared to the guy who's there now, Joe Biden, who’s been a disaster economically.

Look at the world, every single day we wake up to a new crisis, to a new conflict. Everything has gone on fire since the time Joe Biden took over. Afghanistan's gone down. Ukraine has been invaded.

Now, the Philippines and the Chinese are on the verge of something bad happening every single day. Not to mention the threats to Taiwan. And we have this blowup in Haiti going on in our very own hemisphere. We take up every single day, terrorist attacks, 9 million people across the border. That’s what matters to me.

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Absolutely I am.

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Absolutely I'm suggesting it’s happening because of Biden. He’s president and his weakness and his –

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely. I mean Putin is sitting there saying, these guys can't even stand up to the Taliban and they have to fly people hanging off the wings of these airplanes. Now is the time to go. It – and, by the way, the –

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Well, that’s not true. He – what he has said is he wants the conflict to end, which is striking to me that people – why wouldn't people want peace?

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What I've said there is going to be a negotiated – so, Russia's not going to take all of Ukraine –

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And Ukraine's not going to push Russia back to the – where it was in 2014. I want Ukraine to have the upper hand in any negotiation.

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It’s a campaign.

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Yes, but so – so why didn't you play the clip of Kamala Harris basically insinuating that Joe Biden was a segregationist on the debate stage and she’s now his vice president?

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Well, you didn't play it now.

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Yes, that was then. But it was a campaign.

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Well, I don't – so, I don’t think that – on the case of immunity, there's two separate issues here. One is, can the president do anything? Can he go out and basically, you know, kill one of the members of the staff overnight inside the White House? Obviously, that's an absurd outcome and that's a common crime.

But I do think there's a legitimate issue here that we need to talk about writ large, especially after what we've seen the last three years and is, do we want to live in a country where basically the opponents of a president can – can – can extort them, can have leverage over them during their entire presidency and say, don’t worry, once you're out of office, we're going to prosecute you, we’re going to come after, we’re going to charge you for this crime, we’re going to charge you for that crime.

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Well, we'll see. I mean we’ll –

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You know, this goes before the Supreme Court. There are going to be oral arguments and we’ll hear what –

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Yes, but his – but he’s – but he’s not representing himself at the Supreme Court. Lawyers will make that argument.

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But we're living in a country now where basically, if you’re president, now you have to think to yourself, I've got to be careful what I do as president, not even legal or illegal, even on policy, because if I upset the wrong people, as soon as I leave, some state prosecutors are going to –

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Well, but – but you look at these prosecutions that are coming about. You've got this lady (ph), clear partisan in New York –

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Who's basically prosecuting the president over loans, something that's never been done to anybody before? The banks, who are supposedly the victims of what they claim --

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Are all saying, we're don’t even relying on what the president's statements are? We do our own internal investigation to see if the properties are worth what they're worth.

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And you've got a judgment on him. That's just one example of trying to bankrupt him and jail him.

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No.

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What I do think is the people that went into the Capitol and committed crimes of violence, had, you know, zip ties and all that, are different from someone who walked in through an open door. I think they should have prioritized and only prosecuted the people who committed acts of violence and (INAUDIBLE) –

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Well, if you attack a police officer or you go into the Capitol, no.

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But there are people that have been charged, in some cases egregiously charged, for simply walking in. Not – they didn't attack anybody.

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Why didn't they do that for the people that set all those fires in Portland?

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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