Like Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio was widely predicted to win the presidency when he announced his candidacy for the 2016 election. And like Clinton, Rubio is continuing the battle after it officially ended.
Critics are denounced Marco Rubio for his trade war hypocrisy: While campaigning, he largely ignored China’s trade imbalance with the US while Donald Trump promised to get tough via a trade war. But more than three years later, in the midst of war trade negotiations, Rubio suddenly stated that Trump was actually weak because he entered talks with China.
Ironically, instead of being bold enough to directly confront Trump about it, he decided to rant on Twitter: “#China is winning the negotiations. Their concessions are things they planned to do anyways. In exchange they get no tariffs, can keep stealing intellectual property & can keep blocking our companies while they invest in the U.S. without limits. #Losing”
Additionally, like Trump, Rubio has promised to act tough on illegal immigration. But amid the controversy of the Trump Administration detaining migrant children, Rubio suddenly announced that he “[sympathized] with people that are coming here. America is the most generous country in the world and ideally you wouldn’t put people through additional trauma once they came into the United States.”
Although Rubio never stated his motivation for turning against Trump, he does seem eager to shore up his popularity again. An informal adviser to Rubio stated that “when Marco tweets, Fox picks it up, and that’s how the president sees it”, which essentially implied that the former candidate was seeking attention.
And like Hillary, Rubio couldn’t beat Trump because he doesn’t have a specific plan on how to reform America. Simply being staunchly anti-Trump, which was Hillary’s plan, or constantly flip-flopping on supporting Trump, which was Rubio’s “plan”, is not enough.
“What does Rubio get out of it? It will definitely get Trump’s attention, and Trump will choose to smack him down. What’s Rubio’s endgame?”, stated a White House consultant reflecting on Rubio’s lack of vision.
Trump on the other hand, had won because he had consistent plans and consistent promises to execute them, such as carrying out the trade war, fighting illegal immigration, and attacking political correctness.
So what’s the difference between Rubio and Clinton? “Rubio didn’t have many supporters that cried after Trump won,” stated an White House aide.
American Post 