“The first chance I get to vote to end this trial, I’ll do it,” Florida’s senior Senator vowed on Fox News Sunday, “because I think it’s bad for America.”
Rubio argued that Trump “bears some responsibility” for the violence inflicted by his supporters on Jan. 6, but that a Senate trial would “stir it up even more.”
Calling the trial “stupid” and “counterproductive,” Rubio warned that “we already have a flaming fire in this country, and this trial is like taking gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.”
As he has previously, Rubio contended that Trump “bears responsibility for some of what happened,” describing the mayhem that derailed the election certification as “most certainly a foreseeable consequence” of the President’s vivid rhetoric calling on his supporters to march on the Capitol.
“That’s widely understood and better understood with time,” the Senator allowed, “but it’s different than the notion of let’s revisit it all and stir it up again.”
Rubio went on to warn that “we’re going to jump right back into what we’ve been doing for the last five years and stirring it up again with a trial.”
“It’s going to stir it up even more and make it harder to get things done going forward,” he said, predicting that a Senate trial would fuel the political divisions that “turned us into a country of people who hate each other.”
The Senator, not for the first time, invoked the healing balm of the presidential pardon of Richard Nixon after his resignation, noting that the pardon “allowed the country to move forward” and adding that “history held Nixon quite accountable.”
With Rubio possibly facing a primary challenge from the former President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, he will be walking a fine line for at least the next year — between mollifying the base and functioning as a Senator. Expect continued national scrutiny on his every word, especially related to the final dispensation of Trump’s tenure in Washington.
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
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This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2021.