U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined The Mark Levin Show to discuss the border crisis, the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, far-left Marxism, and more. See below for highlights.
On how immigrants view the border crisis:
“I live in a community surrounded by immigrants. I can’t walk a block without running into someone who came from another country. And people here are very upset about what’s happening. It’s easy for these people living on the Upper West Side in New York and in West Hollywood to not care about illegal immigration, because it’s not their schools that are being overcrowded. It’s not their hospitals with the long waiting times. It’s not them that have to face the consequences of rampant illegal immigration.”
On the Democrats’ law hiring 87,000 new IRS agents:
“87,000…is larger than the British Army. It doubles the size of the IRS. We don’t have 87,000 billionaires in this country. So they’re going to be going after [people who aren’t billionaires]. And you know what? People know this. People instinctively know that they’re coming after them, that this is about going after them, that they’re supposed to collect the $100 billion of taxes that they claim aren’t being paid every year. That’s what these people are going to go out there and do. They’re going to harass working people in this country for a long time….
“By the way, they took down the posting, but they’re talking about the IRS agents being armed and, yes, being able to use deadly force. Who [wrote that]? Honestly, it sounds like one of those satire articles, because it doesn’t sound real. Unfortunately, it is.”
On the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago:
“I wish I could say it’s unbelievable. I didn’t think I’d ever see it, but I don’t think anything’s past these people. We’re talking about a six-year campaign now of thing after thing after thing. They tried to impeach Trump. He was out of office, and they tried to impeach him. We spent a week and a half focused on that, not on the big problems in this country. And so none of this surprises me.
“Have you seen the leaking? The almost immediate leaking to the press of people with knowledge of the investigation about what they went in to look for, what they found? If this is a legitimate, non-political, apolitical investigation, there wouldn’t be all this leaking. The only reason you leak things to the press is because you try to influence the narrative. And the only reason to influence the narrative is political. That’s the only reason to do it. You don’t care about public opinion when the public narrative is not political. They’re almost immediately leaking to the press everything that they claim to be looking at, and of course you can’t rebut it, because they’re the only ones that know what they went to look for, what they found or didn’t find, and what have you.
“Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, signed a letter with me we sent [to the Justice Department] saying: ‘You said this is highly classified stuff. That’s what we do. We oversee counterintelligence. We want to see it. We want you to tell us. What is the intelligence in your possession that was so serious that it warranted this unprecedented police action: the 30 agents, the ransacking through the place?’
“But look, the leaks alone tell you everything you need to know. If this was a legitimate investigation, the Justice Department [would] refuse to even acknowledge there’s an investigation, much less leak the way they do.”
On the role of government:
“There’s not a lot of good things about COVID, but one thing that did come out of COVID is a reaffirmation of how important federalism is. How important it is that, to the extent government has control of our lives, that it be as close to us as possible. That it be at your city council, that it be at your county commission, that it be at your state legislature. Not in Washington, where you’ve got to try to influence someone who lives halfway across the country and you can’t vote against.
“So there’s some things the federal government has to do. We have to have a military that’s more focused on beating China in a war than it is on using the right pronouns. We have to be able to secure our border. There are things we regulate, like airplanes. We want our airplanes to be regulated so that they’re safe and they can take off and land and the landing gear works and the person flying it really is a pilot. But after that…, it really now becomes a function—to the extent that government is playing a role—of state and local government. And you’re going to have different laws in different places based on who people vote for in those places.
“I think that’s part of this defunding the IRS argument. We don’t need a massive IRS collecting a massive amount of taxes to fund a government that’s doing things it shouldn’t be doing.
“I’m not interested in American decline. I hear Biden, and it’s one of the things they like to go around saying now, is, ‘We are moving to an era of sustainable and steady growth.’ To me, that sounds like we’re moving into an era where we’re going to manage America’s decline. We’re the British Empire after World War II. We’re slowly going to be on the downhill trajectory, settling in. We’re an important country but no longer special. I have zero interest in that.
“This is the most special country in the history of the world. There is nothing out there to replace us except China [with] a Marxist, Godless regime that runs it. I don’t want to live in a world where they’re the most powerful country. I want to live in the America that is special and unique. And we have to have a commitment to that in our economic policy, in our domestic policies, in our foreign policy, and everything we do.”
On Marxism in America:
“I live in south Florida, which is not a majority conservative area. I’ve known liberals my entire life. I know them now. They want higher taxes. They want more government agencies. But that’s not Marxism. Marxism is not even an economic model…. Marxism is about control. It’s about controlling society. So when Marxists take over, they have to displace the family because they can’t have parents undermining them. They have to displace religion and churches because they can’t have God telling you what to do instead of them. They have to go into the schools so they can indoctrinate the kids. They have to take over speech, the words you’re allowed to say and not allowed to say. They use government as an instrument for that takeover. And ultimately, they believe that people are not smart enough to govern their own lives. They believe in controlling every aspect of it. And they are never satisfied. That’s the key. That’s how you know it’s Marxism.
“Marxism is never satisfied. They’re not satisfied with control in Congress. They’re not satisfied with controlling government. They don’t [just] want to control government, they want to control everything. There is zero aspect of our life that they will not try to take over and tell you how to run. And you see it. You see its tentacles everywhere. You can’t watch a movie, you can’t watch a television series, or a commercial anymore without seeing its influence on our lives. It just continues to creep and chip away.
“Maybe I am overly sensitive to it because I’ve grown up around people who have been warning about it for a long time. There were many years where I thought that would never happen to me—it just couldn’t happen here. And now I see it and I see the inklings of it. I see the clear indications of the direction. And I think a lot of the people that are helping them do it have no idea that they’re involved in this kind of a movement. They don’t call themselves Marxists, but they have no idea that what they’re pushing is an agenda that basically is Marxist in every single way.”
On the Hispanic community and Marxism:
“They’ve seen this movie before and they recognize it and they know this is always how it starts.… Someone takes over, they demonize the other side, and they tell you why it’s so important that they be given all this power so they can make your life better because they care more about you than the other side. They’ve seen it.…
“Some of the most patriotic people I know are people that know what life is like in other places. Because when you know what life is like in another place and then you hear someone tell you how awful America is, you think they’re nuts. And sometimes you get really angry about it because you know how bad life is in other places. And so I think that’s been a big part of it.
“I think the other thing we forget [is that] Hispanics in this country are predominantly working-class people and small business owners: the two classes most hurt by Marxism and by this administration and by the radical left. They’re not happy with schools trying to indoctrinate their kids and teaching them that this is some sort of racist country. They don’t want their kids growing up feeling like they’re victims of some systemic oppression because they’re not. They’re here for the opportunity to work hard. So the Democratic Party has not just abandoned working-class people, including Hispanics, they’ve become hostile to the interests of working class people and their values.”
