Marco Rubio continued his war of words with Ted Cruz Wednesday morning, dismissing his vow to “utterly destroy” the Islamic State despite supporting cuts to defense spending.
Appearing on Fox News, Rubio told host Martha MacCallum that the Texas senator’s “tough talk” doesn’t match up with his votes in the U.S. Senate, pointing to his votes against defense authorization bills and for budgets that “dramatically cuts defense spending.”
“This is an important and complex issue, and we do need to have an in depth debate about our intelligence programs, about our defense capabilities,” Rubio said.
“All this tough talk — you know, Ted said he’s going to ‘utterly destroy ISIS.’ Anyone can say that. What are you going to do it with?” Rubio asked the host. “And when you support a budget like he does that dramatically cuts defense spending, when you vote against every defense authorization bill ever presented before you … how can you then stand there and say that I’m going to utterly destroy ISIS, but I’m not going to pay for it or support what it will take to utterly destroy ISIS.”
Rubio repeated those comments less than an hour later during a rally in Ankeny, Iowa, asking how Cruz is going to “make the sands of the Middle East glow” by carpet bombing the Islamic State if the resources are unavailable. The remark by the Florida senator refers directly to comments by his 2016 rival on Dec. 5, during which Cruz said he wasn’t sure “if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”
“How are you going to make the sands of the Middle East glow if you don’t have the bombs or the Air Force to do it with?” Rubio rhetorically asked the crowd. “How are you going to defend yourself if you have an army smaller that’s than it’s ever been since World War II? How are you going to keep our country safe with a navy that’s smaller and older than at any time since 1950?”
“Talking tough is not enough. You need the capability,” Rubio argued. “And in a world where North Korea, and China, and Russia, and Iran, and radical jihadists like ISIS pose a threat, how can it be that we are weakening our military? And how can it be that in the Republican Party that we have people that justify it?”
Rubio currently ranks third, behind only Cruz and Donald Trump, in the Washington Examiner‘s latest batch of power rankings.
