Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday defended Donald Trump after he called for guns to be “trained” on rival Liz Cheney‘s face, claiming that the media inaccurately portrayed the remark as violent.
Speaking to Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, Rubio suggested that Trump was simply misunderstood because he doesn’t use the same language as most politicians, and that the press made a “concerted effort” to paint him in a bad light.
“Donald Trump doesn‘t talk like someone who’s been in Washington for 30 years. He doesn‘t say it the way I would have said it,” Rubio said after he was played a clip of Trump’s comments in which the former president suggested that Cheney should stand in front of a firing squad.
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The clip, from an interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson Thursday, showed Trump saying: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Rubio, however, insisted that Trump only intended to call the former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, a war hawk.
“I mean everybody knows exactly what he was saying. What he was saying is ’You‘re so much in favor of war,’” Rubio said.
“We played a soundbite,” Brennan responded to which Rubio countered, “No, you played a piece of the soundbite, because in another piece of it he said he would give her a gun to go stand in conflict as well.”
“You don‘t normally give a gun to someone that’s going to be facing a firing squad, which is what much of the media made it sound like,” he added in Trump’s defense.
The senator then reiterated the Trump campaign’s explanation for his comments, stating that the former president was only suggesting the daughter of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney would not be such a keen supporter of foreign intervention if she had to go to war herself.
“And he uses language that maybe is not what we typically hear from someone that works at a think tank. Well, fine,” Rubio said.
“But I think it‘s truly not just unfair, it‘s egregious, to see that reported the way that it was, along with other things that are out there.
“I‘ve never seen such a concerted effort – and I always believe there‘s bias because no one’s unbiased – but I‘ve never seen such a concerted effort like what I’ve seen, especially in the last two weeks, among multiple media outlets in this country to in some cases breathlessly distort and lie about what‘s being said and to create and manufacture these ’Gotcha' moments against Donald Trump," he said.
Brennan didn‘t seem to moved by Rubio’s complaints about the press.
Instead, she closed the exchange by suggesting that Trump’s language could further inflame the risk of political unrest.
“Senator, you are the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee. You also know the former Commander in Chief is not just some guy off the street, and words matter. US intelligence has specifically warned about the risk of political violence in this country,” she said.
