ABC’s Jon Karl Grills Marco Rubio Over His Willingness to Be Trump’s VP in Testy Interview: ‘Look What Happened To The Last Guy’

ABC News anchor Jon Karl grilled Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) over the possibility that former President Donald Trump will pick him as his vice presidential running mate.

Recently, reports have circulated that the Florida lawmaker is on Trump’s shortlist for vice president. During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Rubio reiterated his prior statements that he would be honored to serve in the White House alongside Trump.

Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence is no longer on speaking terms with the man he once served under — and has refused to endorse Trump in the general election against President Joe Biden.

Karl asked Rubio about Trump’s recent comments claiming that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats, hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”

The Florida senator refused to condemn Trump’s remarks:

I think that there’s an argument. There’s a difference between being, you know, pro-Israel and there are people… being your religion and being pro-Israel can be two separate things. And then there’s people that are pro-Israel but maybe don’t like Netanyahu or what have you. At the end of the day, my view of it is pretty consistent. And that is that if you are out here, if you are claiming, if you are on the side of anyone who wants Israel to stop, in my view, given the realities of the world, if you want Israel to stop, what it basically means is that Hamas will continue to be able to threaten Israel. And so Hezbollah, it is a… this is not a fight over land. This is not a territorial dispute. This is an existential battle. And anyone who doesn’t understand that is, frankly, whether they know it or not, an enemy of Israel, or at least on the side of what could lead to the destruction of the Jewish state. And that is something that I think is untenable. And I hope people will reconsider that are out there, arguing that Israel should somehow stop at this point.

Karl then pressed Rubio over his eagerness to serve as Trump’s vice president, citing MAGA supporters chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol:

KARL: There were some reporting this week that you are possibly under consideration to be Donald Trump’s running mate. I don’t put a lot of stock in this reporting right now or where early, but you said it would be an honor to be offered a spot on his ticket. Really?

RUBIO: Yeah, I think anyone who’s offered the opportunity to serve this country as vice president should be honored by the opportunity to do it. If you’re in public service, I’m in the Senate because I want to serve the country. Being vice president is an important way to serve the country. But I’ve also been clear I’ve never talked to Donald Trump. I’ve never talked to anybody on his team or family or inner circle about vice president. That’s a decision he’s going to make. He has plenty of really good people to pick from.

KARL: I mean, the reason why…I mean, look what happened to the last guy! A mob stormed the Capitol, literally calling to hang Mike Pence. And Trump defended those chants of “Hang Mike Pence.”

RUBIO: I will tell you this, that when Donald Trump was president, United States, this country was safer. It was more prosperous. We had we had relations, for example, in a part of the world that I care about called the Western Hemisphere, that we’re very strong. We got a lot of good things done there. I think the country and the world is a better place when he was president, and I would love to see him return to the white House in comparison to the guy who’s there now, Joe Biden has been a disaster economically. Look. Look at the world. Every single day we wake up to a new crisis, to a new conflict. Everything has gone on fire since the time Joe Biden took over. Afghanistan has gone down. Ukraine has been invaded. Now the Philippines and the Chinese are on the verge of something bad happening every single day, not to mention the threats to Taiwan. We have we had this blow up in Haiti going on in our very own hemisphere. We wake up every single day terrorist attacks.

The news anchor then confronted Rubio with statement he made during the 2016 Republican primary bashing Trump as a “con artist.” Rubio brushed off those comments, claiming it was just part of the campaign.

Watch the clip above via ABC News.