Marco Rubio Won’t Say If Donald Trump Is Qualified To Be President

Republican presidential candidate. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. pauses while speaking during a town hall meeting with employees of BAE Systems in Nashua, N.H., Monday Feb. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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In an editorial board meeting with the Orlando Sentinel that was posted earlier this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) refused to say if he believed Trump was qualified to be the president of the United States and said instead that he was making a “binary choice.”

During the interview, Rubio was asked what makes Trump qualified.

“Well ultimately in our republic the voters decide that. In essence there is no pre-qualification for running for office. It is voters at the ballot box that decide who among us citizens are able to move that,” Rubio said.

Rubio was asked again if he even thought Trump was qualified.

“Well, that’s what the voters will have to decide. I will tell you I have strong disagreements with him on some public policy matters, and I remain hopeful that on those matters he will either change his opinion or we will have to stand up to those bad ideas,” Rubio said. “I’ve said that repeatedly. But I know for a fact for example that Hillary Clinton will not nominate to the Supreme Court someone who views the Supreme Court the way that I do, and that is as an appellate court whose judges are there to act as triers of the law, not triers of fact, who are there to apply and interpret the Constitution as originally intended.”

Rubio goes on to describe other policies he disagrees with Clinton on.

“We’re down to the choice we have now. And as I said as a candidate for president a few months ago this is not the choice I wanted us to have, but it is the choice that the voters have made.”

The vague answer revealed another instance in which Republican senators on the campaign trail are struggling to strike the balance between just disavowing Trump and fulling embracing him. Rubio has said he will vote for Donald Trump in order to stop Hillary Clinton from reaching the White House. However, during his own presidential run, Rubio was a harsh critic of Trump.

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