Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told CBS on Sunday that he should have more “clarity” on whether or not he’ll run for president after November’s midterm election.
“I’ll have to make decision in 2016 either way, because I’m up for re-election in the Senate and for me it’s not going to be about the position. It’s going to be about where can I best advocate for a 21st century reform agenda that allows us to usher in another American century,” Rubio told Face the Nation.
“The decision I have to make is can I best do that as a senator or can I best do that as running and hopefully winning the presidency,” he continued. “And that is a question I’ll have more clarity on after this midterm, because I can promise you this, the one place where I will not be able to do that from is a Senate that is still run by Harry Reid, that allows no votes on anything of substance or importance.”
Rubio sits on the Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees and has been seizing foreign policy as a signature issue in the past few months.
He stressed that he believes ISIS currently poses a threat to the homeland.
“First and foremost because they are replete with both European and American fighters and more Europeans than Americans who have passports that allow them immediate access into the United States,” Rubio said. “Second, because I think it’s important not to overestimate the amount of intelligence that we have on these groups and about these groups; they have learned a lot about our intelligence gathering capabilities through a series of disclosures and other sorts of things.”
“And they have become increasingly capable at evading detection. So for us to simply sit back and say we don’t think they pose a threat because we haven’t seen one I think would be shortsighted. The fact of the matter is this group has, among their ranks, hundreds if not thousands of people with the capability of entering the United States quickly and easily and we should not take that lightly.”
Saying he doesn’t take the accusation lightly, Rubio charged that “this president has committed presidential malpractice in his foreign policy.”
“I think that Exhibit A is what he’s done with the Middle East. He ran for office under the notion that our national interests in the Middle East were to disengage as quickly as possible and disentangle from the region, and that has been chaotic, it has led to a series of policy pronouncements and words that he is — whether it’s saying that the ISIL was the J.V., whether it’s setting red lines that weren’t in force,” the senator said.
“All these things have been dramatically counterproductive to our foreign policy and I think have created some generational and reputational damage to the United States of great significance.”
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