Manchester, N.H.
Florida senator Marco Rubio responded Wednesday morning to Donald Trump’s comment that the use of eminent domain for private projects is a “wonderful thing.”
“He’s wrong,” Rubio told THE WEEKLY STANDARD following a campaign event at a tech company in New Hampshire. “In Florida when I was a state legislator, we passed what has become model legislation for other states around the country–that I actually passed–both a law and a constitutional amendment that keeps developers like Donald Trump from using eminent domain to take private property away from an owner and give it to another private owner, which is what the Kelo decision said should be legal unless states barred it. So he’s wrong about that. One of the most important rights Americans have is private property.”
In an interview Tuesday evening with Bret Baier on Fox News, Trump praised the government’s seizing private property from individuals in order to “build this massive development that’s going to employ thousands of people, or you’re going to build a factory, that without this little house, you can’t build the factory.”
Conservative commentators widely criticized Trump for supporting the government trampling on individual rights.
