Sen. Marco Rubio Shockingly Tells CBS News This Morning: ‘I Support People Making More Than $9’

On Wednesday morning’s CBS News This Morning, Senator Marco Rubio followed up his thirst-impeded attempt at a GOP re-branding SOTU rebuttal by telling anchors Norah O’Donnell and Charlie Rose that he doesn’t support President Obama‘s call for a $9-an-hour minimum wage because “I support people making more than $9.”

For a GOP that’s trying to get away from a “Party Of The Rich” image, it was an unfortunate sound bite from its supposed savior, but Rubio wasn’t done there, as O’Donnell and Rose pressed him on a variety of issues, including measures to prevent gun violence, which Rubio opposes because criminals won’t follow them. If this is the Republicans’ savior, maybe they ought to look up Barabbas and see if he’s interested in the job.

Charlie Rose began by asking Rubio about President Obama’s impassioned plea for a vote on measures to prevent gun violence. “Deserves a vote. Do you agree? Do those people deserve a vote?” Rose asked.

“First of all, our heart is broken for those people,” Rubio replied, before expressing his heartbreak in the traditional form of a bald-faced lie. “The problem is everything the president is proposing would do nothing to have prevented what happened in Newtown, and would do nothing to prevent further violence in the future.”

With only a few minutes to quiz Rubio, Rose and O’Donnell couldn’t stop and challenge everything Rubio said, but I can. If you want to argue against gun regulation, there are fair arguments to make, but if you truly care about the victims of gun violence, you don’t lie about it. Both the weapon and the magazine type used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting would have been banned under the President’s proposals, and law-abiding Nancy Lanza would not have been able to purchase them. Additionally, President Obama’s proposals include a provision to fund armed police officers in any school that wants them, which even Wayne LaPierre agrees could have made all the difference.

Rubio went on to say that Florida has “gun laws that are pretty strict,” when, in fact, Florida ranks 41st on the Brady Campaign To End Gun Violence’s state ranking, with a score of 3 out of 100. Rubio craftily tried to narrow his claim to “We have gun laws that are pretty strict in terms of requiring background checks and if you’re a concealed weapons permit holder,” but even those claims are false. Florida does not require background checks on all gun purchases, nor is a permit required to purchase any firearm.

Rubio then proceeded to argue against ever making laws about anything, ever. “The problem is laws are only followed by law-abiding people,” he said, adding “The people who commit these gun crimes, they don’t care what the law is. They don’t follow the law. They’re criminals.”

“I also think they undermine on the other hand the right of law-abiding citizens to possess arms via the Second Amendment,” Rubio continued, despite the fact that all of these proposals have been enacted at the federal level, to some degree, in the past, and none have been ruled unconstitutional. Of course, Rubio’s opinion of these proposals’ constitutionality is underined by the fact that he also claims not to know what the proposals are.

“I’m not sure which proposals the President was speaking to,” Rubio said, even though the President quite specifically referenced background checks, gun trafficking, and bans on assault weapons and extended magazines.

He finished up the gun portion of the interview by repeating the lie that “none of that would have prevented what happened in Connecticut.”

Rubio also ran away from his opposition to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and explained his vote against the Violence Against Women Act “because it has a provision that hurts Florida,” without mentioning his opposition to new protections for Native American women.

Finally, Rubio was asked, “Can you support a $9 minimum wage?”

“I support people making more than $9. I want people to make as much as they can. I don’t believe a minimum law works,” Rubio explained, without explaining how protecting the right to pay people less than that achieves that goal. It’s like saying you oppose medicine because you want everyone to be healthy. This is about as close as Sen. Rubio got to an honest argument, which is that every nickel you pay a poor person is one less nickel for the rich. Paying people poverty wages is how they “make as much as they can.”

He went on to assert that minimum wage laws “never worked in helping middle class gain more prosperity,” which is, again, a bit like saying that medicine doesn’t help people who aren’t sick.

What studies have shown is that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t hurt job growth, and as President Obama said last night, would lift millions of Americans out of poverty through work. Since poor people spend pretty much all of what they make, those increased wages would go right back into the economy, and benefit other businesses.

Rose also asked Rubio about his impromptu quench during his rebuttal last night. “Were you nervous?” he asked.

“Unfortunately when owe’re giving a speech, you’re standing at the podium,” Rubio replied. “I had a long day of work, I had just taped an 18-minute speech in Spanish. I’m just glad the water was nearby, I don’t know what I would have done without it.”

Here’s the interview, from CBS News This Morning:

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.