5 Times Rubio Slammed Trump—Before Promising to Vote for Him

He now thinks this “lunatic” and “con man” is the best choice for president.

Wilfredo Lee/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Marco Rubio will vote for Donald Trump this November. He’s not yet ready to say the words “I will vote for Donald Trump,” but based on this tweet, a quick process of elimination makes his intentions clear.

The senator from Florida has come a long way since this past winter, when he attacked Trump with increasing savagery. In the final weeks of his presidential campaign, Rubio swung hard at the Republican front-runner in an attempt to win his home state. He failed, and dropped out the night he lost the Florida primary, but not before calling Trump a whole lot of names.

Here’s a sampling of the epithets and insults Rubio slung just a few short months ago at the man he is now supporting for president:

February 26: Rubio called Trump a “con artist who is telling people one thing but has spent 40 years sticking it to working Americans and now claims to be their champion.”

February 26: Rubio questioned Trump’s most basic qualifications, including his ability to spell words. “How does this guy—not one tweet, but three tweets—misspell words so badly?” he asked. “And I only come to two conclusions. No. 1, that’s how they spell those words at the Wharton School of Business, where he went, and No. 2, just like Trump Tower, he must have hired a foreign worker to do his own tweets.” Zing!

February 27: He said Trump is a “a lunatic trying to get ahold of nuclear weapons in America.”

February 29: He implied Trump has a small penis. “He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2″,” Rubio said. “Have you seen his hands? They’re like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands?” Rubio paused, then added, “You can’t trust them!”

March 12: He went after Trump for encouraging violence at his rallies, accusing him of “[feeding] into language that basically justifies assaulting people who disagree with you.” The same day, he called Trump “rude and obnoxious and offensive—deliberately offensive for the purposes of driving media narrative.”

Now Rubio will be voting for Trump. What happened to the man who said, “Friends do not let friends vote for con artists”?

LESS DREADING, MORE DOING

This is the rubber-meets-road moment: the early days in our first fundraising drive since we took a big swing and merged with CIR to bring fearless investigative reporting to the internet, radio, video, and everywhere else that people need an antidote to lies and propaganda.

Donations have started slow, and we hope that explaining, level-headedly, why your support really is everything for our reporting will make a difference. Learn more in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” or in this 2:28 video about our merger (that literally just won an award), and please pitch in if you can right now.

payment methods

LESS DREADING, MORE DOING

This is the rubber-meets-road moment: the early days in our first fundraising drive since we took a big swing and merged with CIR to bring fearless investigative reporting to the internet, radio, video, and everywhere else that people need an antidote to lies and propaganda.

Donations have started slow, and we hope that explaining, level-headedly, why your support really is everything for our reporting will make a difference. Learn more in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” or in this 2:28 video about our merger (that literally just won an award), and please pitch in if you can right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate