Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), President Donald Trump’s running mate, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) lives the perfect American story, worthy of being on the shortlist.
Rubio, who has worked closely with Vance on issues relating to the American worker, said Vance’s “life story, I think, shows what this means: putting the American people first. Who could resent that?”
WATCH — Bernie Moreno discusses the significance of Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as VP at the 2024 Republican National Convention:
Matt Purdy/Breitbart News
“I’ve worked with JD since 2017, 2018,” Rubio told Breitbart’s Washington bureau chief Matt Boyle. “I remember having a meeting with him in my office in 2018 about public policy, and I was very impressed with him.”
Rubio joked that he began to doubt Vance’s intelligence after he started getting interested in politics, “and then he decided to run for the Senate. I thought, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s out of his mind. He’s going into politics now. Are you crazy? Haven’t you heard what’s going on around you?’ He was one of the people I worked closely with while I was in office.”
Rubio offered his thoughts on Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention.
Sen. J.D. Vance speaks to attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 16, 2023. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
“I think what people saw last night was, on the one hand, an incredibly intelligent, really smart, inquisitive guy,” he said. “He loves to learn. He loves to learn about things. I think being curious is a really important trait. President Trump is a curious guy. He’s more likely to ask questions than he is to make statements.”
Boyle spoke about Trump’s penchant for asking questions during a number of interviews.
“If you meet him in person, he’ll ask you nine questions about anything you say. And he loves to hear. He’s like running focus groups with the American people. That’s where he got his idea about tipping,” Rubio said, referring to Trump’s proposal to eliminate tip taxes. “It didn’t come from a think tank, it came from a waitress in Las Vegas. And JD has a lot of those qualities. He loves to learn things.”
WATCH — Jim Jordan talks about Trump’s nomination of J.D. Vance and the Secret Service investigation after the assassination attempt:
Matt Purdy/Breitbart News
Rubio said Vance possesses one of the rarest qualities in a politician: integrity.
One of the things that came across last night, and this is really important and I can’t fake it, is that he comes across as a guy that you know, “I know a guy like that.”
A lot of times, people in politics feel alienated and distant, as if they’re playing a role. And last night, I was like, “I know that guy.” And I think he has that great combination of, when you’re in this job for a long time, sometimes you start to lose that feeling. Even the best people have to work hard to maintain it. And I think last night, that’s going to be a great asset to a president, because I think his life story shows what this means: putting the American people first. Who could resent that?
Boyle discussed the ongoing political realignment caused by politicians’ missteps in both parties, particularly the Republican Party, and asked Rubio to share his observations from his travels through Rust Belt states and the vision he and Vance share for revitalizing those regions.
“So think about it: If you came of age in the early to mid-2000s, you’ve already inherited a bipartisan consensus that we’ve reached a point where certain jobs and industries will go elsewhere, but better jobs will come home as a result,” he said. “And, frankly, that’s a bipartisan consensus to some extent, but it’s certainly a dominant theme in the Republican Party: that the market is going to magically fix everything.
He continued, “I believe 100 percent in free enterprise, but what we’ve lost in all of this is, wait a minute: if we move American jobs and factories elsewhere, sure, we’ll have more efficiency, we’ll have lower costs, we’ll have cheaper prices in the stores, but we’ve lost two things: jobs that support families and communities, and industrial capacity that we’re going to need someday.”
Rubio continued, “And the other question is, what I’ve experienced over the years, and what really became apparent to me in 2015 and the presidential election, is, you know, I’m not from an industrialized state. And when you start interacting with people who are hurting, [and you ask] “What if the free enterprise system is the most efficient but ends up being bad for America? Because it’s more efficient to manufacture medicines in China, but it’s not good for America to be dependent on China.”
The Florida senator elaborated on the issue of production and people as key points for politicians to understand.
“That’s where we’ve got to now. We have to understand that economic growth is important, but we can’t just judge the health of our economy by the size of our GDP. We have to judge it by how our GDP is growing,” he argued. “Is it creating good jobs? Is it protecting our industrial capacity to make things when the country needs them? And we need stable jobs to have stable communities. And I think that’s come back to the Republican Party, but it was gone for 20 years. Nobody talked about it like that.”
Given that the Republican Party has long promoted unrestricted free trade, Boyle asked Rubio what advice he and Vance would give to convey their vision to American workers.
“Frankly, I don’t think Donald Trump and J.D. Vance need my advice on how to communicate,” Rubio responded. “I think they need to learn how to communicate from them, because they’re the heart of the message.”
Rubio discussed the Biden administration’s caved in to radical environmentalists and canceled the Keystone Pipeline, and the devastating impact that and similar decisions have had on American workers whose jobs depend on the canceled projects. He said policymakers must make decisions to protect American jobs, and that Trump and Vance will deliver that message to American workers.
“I think you heard from the president of the Teamsters the other day,” he said, “Yes, collective bargaining, the company you work for is no longer in America. [it] “They took that job somewhere else. There’s no collective bargaining. Right? The job doesn’t exist, so there’s no room for collective bargaining.”
Bradley Jay is Capitol Hill correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter. translator.
