Sen. Marco Rubio reflected on his presidential campaign Monday, saying that his failed bid for the GOP nomination was less to do with his campaign than it was about Donald Trump’s, likening his arrival to that of a massive hurricane.
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Rubio made the remarks in an interview with The Guardian on Monday more than two months after ending his bid. The Florida senator wrapped up his campaign after losing the Florida primary to Trump by 18 percentage points.
“A lot of times it feels almost like the guy who built this really strong building, and it was in the right place, and it was the way these buildings have always been built, but he got hit by a category five hurricane,” Rubio said in the interview.
“It’s not that we lost, it’s that Donald Trump won,” he said. “It was just a very unusual political year.”
Rubio will have ended up finishing third in the GOP delegate count behind Trump and fellow Sen. Ted Cruz, who ended his campaign after his loss in Indiana earlier this month. Despite remaining in the race nearly two months longer than Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich still finished fourth in the GOP delegate count.
Since ending his campaign, Rubio has returned to finish out his term in the senate, where he has fought for the $1.9 billion in funding for Zika that the Obama administration has asked for. Additionally, he took a week-long trip during recess to the Middle East (Iraq, Turkey and Qatar) to find out first hand what is happening on the ground in the region.
Speculation continues to swirl over what Rubio plans to do in January after he finishes his term in the upper chamber, with a potential 2018 run for governor or a 2020 presidential bid sitting as possibilities.
