Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Monday came out against the armed militia currently occupying a federal wildlife refuge in rural Oregon, accusing them of breaking the law.
“Let me just say, first of all, you’ve got to follow the law,” Rubio said on Iowa radio station KBUR. “You can’t be lawless. We live in a republic. There are ways to change the laws of this country and the policies. If we get frustrated with it, that’s why we have elections. That’s why we have people we can hold accountable.”
A small group of armed individuals, led by anti-government rancher Ammon Bundy, on Saturday took over the unoccupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near the town of Burns, Oregon in order to provoke a standoff with the federal government. The group believes that federally managed land should belong to the locals who live there.
Though Rubio said he disagreed with the groups’ methods, he told KBUR that he agrees with their assertion that the federal government exerts too much control over land and resources in the western U.S.
“There are states for example like Nevada that are dominated by the federal government in terms of land holding and we should fix it, but no one should be doing it in a way that’s outside the law,” Rubio said.
Listen to an excerpt of the interview below via KBUR.
h/t Buzzfeed
