Reporters “Were Eating Out of Marco Rubio’s Hand”: Will Rubio Be the 2028 Republican Nominee?

追加: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Now, let's talk about uh Rubio and uh and uh Vance.

[00:00:08]If you watch the Rubio press conference and and you're the kind of person to fawn over Marco Rubio, and I'm looking at some of you right now, it melted. It was like uh it was like uh Archie Andrews watching Veronica and Betty uh sing uh Cabaret. I don't know. You get my point. Uh yeah, if you want to swoon over Marco Rubio, he walked in the briefing room and the reporters in there were eating out of his hand. They were just laughing at his jokes and jockeying to ask him questions and not pushing back very hard. You know, they asked some questions, but it was it was a love fest. And and and although I'm a Rubio skeptic in the sense that I like him fine, I've always gotten along with him.

[00:00:51]I think he's a nice guy. I think he's very funny. He's widely thought of as the funniest person in the administration and he is.

[00:00:58]I mean, you know, lowhanging fruit here.

[00:01:01]Uh but but we'll see how we'll see what kind of day Vance has. My point is if you're writing a if Vance ends if Rubio ends up being the Republican nominee or president in 2028 and today will be a big day because because everyone and there are people I see in the chat as I glance at it. Everyone in the media, everyone in the Republican party, everyone in the Democratic party, everyone who wants to say, "Oh, Rubio's so much better than Vance."

[00:01:28]No matter how well Vance does in Iowa today, they're going to say it today.

[00:01:31]They're going to say, "Oh my god, he's so good. Oh, he was so good. He was okay, but he was very good. He was as good as you could be. But but again, I I just I just I just don't think it's that hard to walk into that briefing room and and charm the pants off of uh the folks there. Katie Balls, what row were you Did you have a seat at the briefing today?

[00:01:52]>> No, I don't get a seat. I'm too >> You're like Eliza You're like Eliza Dittle standing on the side.

[00:01:58]>> Exactly. I All I have is a sharp elbow.

[00:02:01]>> Yeah. Um uh and did you try to get called on >> it? To be honest, it was so busy. To your point, um you know, I've gone to various White House briefings are always pretty full. I've definitely benefited from what I understand. Um the Trump administration has widened out the number of journalists who can get hard passes.

[00:02:21]>> Yeah.

[00:02:21]>> So people say, you know, Biden era, it was really tricky. So there's loads of us who have these passes, but it means the room is too small. Um and obviously when the president speaks, there's lots of people. when Caroline leave it speaks there's a big crowd but it was packed and people were sending messages saying you know you need to get here an hour early if you're going to get in that room and to your point it was quite a amable it was quite a jolly atmosphere sometimes it could feel a bit more adversarial but um >> everyone was quite happy Maru was speaking and I think he just has that reputation whereby >> lots of the journalists see him almost as the adult in the room um when they think about dealing with figures in the Trump administration and that did come cross a bit and then you had this hilarious competition to get his attention and one of the journalists there was saying it's a little bit like when you have a substitute teacher at school so people are trying to you know he is saying yes to one journalist and people are just pretending they think he's pointing at them and then the journalists who spoke Spanish were shouting questions in Spanish thinking that might get his attention others were just shouting Venezuela Colombia so there were lot lots of tricks that I didn't feel fully able to compete with if I'm being honest.

[00:03:31]>> Yeah, Katie, I can tell you the the trick that's most important for a lady.

[00:03:35]Uh this goes back to the Reagan administration. You want to wear the exact color I'm wearing.

[00:03:41]>> Okay. Lady in red.

[00:03:42]>> Red. A president's call on ladies in red. And if you go look at the briefing, he actually called, I think, on at least two women wearing red. It's just a It's just a thing for the next time.

[00:03:51]>> Okay.

[00:03:51]>> You got you got anything this color?

[00:03:53]>> Yeah. And I made a mistake. I went for green. Okay. But I know for next time.

[00:03:57]>> Red. It's not It's not about MAGA. It's just a thing. I don't know why presidents do it. President Reagan famously did it. I can't remember the exact incident. Uh, are you a fan?

[00:04:04]>> The British the British journalists always do when Donald Trump visits the UK is to try and wear tartan because he tends to pick that >> tartan. Um, are you a fan of uh the Indiana Jones movies?

[00:04:18]>> I've watched some of them. Yeah, there's a scene, I think it's the one of the first scenes, maybe the first scene or not the first scene, but it's an early scene in I think the first movie where he's a professor and uh and the students, all the female students just love Harris, a young Harrison Ford and and one of them I think I think closes her eyelids and she's got something written on the eyelids. Someone will put this in the chat. Uh love, is that what they put in the eyelids? Like L and V? I don't know. Anyway, I I'm not saying this is true of you or everyone in the room, but some of those reporters were just besided, right? I mean, they were just staring at him like, "Oh, OMG, date me. Marco, call me."

[00:04:57]>> There was also a lot of laughter. So, whereas I think normally, I mean, I think British American media is a bit different anyway, but normally there's a bit more of a sense of we're going to take you to task and do these really hard follow-ups, whereas, and look, I think it was perhaps a question people wanted, but near the end, one of the the final questions was, "What is your real DJ name?" Um, >> and I think it did speak to um how the room almost wanted Marco Rubio to succeed. And obviously the backdrop which you're touching on is we know the president likes to play a dinner game of saying Marco or JD and it feels as though it's JD's to lose but I think the media and also I think Europeans generally obviously European party again have this sense that they almost think Marco Rubio is someone they find it easier to do business with than the harder end of mega.

[00:05:47]>> Right. Well said. Uh we could play you the whole Rubio thing. We don't have time. I'm gonna play a bite or two, a sound bite or two from it. Um, again, he had his shtick was I don't really know who anybody is and I all you want to ask questions. He made the same joke about 20 times and again I don't want to be thought of as a Marco Rubio hater. I like him fine but but the swooning and my inbox filled with swoons like ah one joke bring more material. All right, here's a little bit of the Secretary Rubio. Uh, this is a short one. This is Secretary Rubio saying uh don't test his boss. Number eight, please.

[00:06:22]point I would make and it really is important for them to understand this is uh they really shouldn't test the will of the United States at least not under President Donald Trump. Uh he has proven time and again that he will back up what he says and if they test him ultimately they will lose the hard way the easy way the long way the short way they will lose. All right, play play some of number 11. Just some of it and just so you get more of a sense of what he said.

[00:06:46]>> While this project steadily progresses, Operation Epic Fury, economic fury, I'm sorry, continues to impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime and what remains of their already frail economy.

[00:06:59]Today, inflation in Iran is 70%. And their currency is in total and complete freefall. US sanctions enforcement is stepping up. It's moving in lock step with the naval blockade to degrade Iran's cap capacity to generate to move and repatriate revenue. It directly targets the regime's primary revenue life lifelines. The blockade alone is costing Iran as much as $500 million a day in lost revenue. 90% of total Iranian trade has been halted, causing permanent damage to Iran's oil infrastructure as well are forced to shut in. Again, all of this is in response to their piracy. Okay? It cannot be that you have these straits and they blow up any ship that moves and the only ships they get to go through are theirs. You can't have a situation in which the straits are close to everyone else, but they benefit from the piracy. That can't happen. That's why the blockade is in place and that's why these sanctions are crippling them. Any foreign his main point at the briefing in his opening statement and a lot of his answers was folks woke up and smell the coffee. This this is a pirate regime. It's an evil regime. They're breaking the law. They're threatening the crews that are trapped in the strait. They're threatening to violate international law by closing the straight or charging to go through. You can't trust a regime like that with nuclear weapons. And only Donald Trump is standing up to them. Here's a let's polyarket this partners at Poly Market ask what are the odds that the traffic in the straight returns to normal by the end of May 12. So that's in a little less than a month. Uh and the poly market wager is a little pessimistic to my ears. 16% chance that the traffic returns to normal by the end of May. Uh Katie Balls, uh do you think the administration is is potentially on track to have it open? Do you think, as I said in my monologue, that they actually have a plan that could work?

[00:08:44]>> I mean, potentially. I think that they're off track in the sense that you get the sense they didn't expect it to go on for this long and terms of the straight of Hammoo. We know the president was warned about this as being a consequence of it. Um but certainly I think how it's panned out and obviously with war every day that goes on the more kind of unintended consequences and the trickier it gets. Um I think that you can see today that there's clearly this appetite to suggest progress. So they say the original operation is done now it's this part and again trying to make it the the problem of other countries to step in including Europe. There's a frustration there. I think that Marary was asked in the briefing um you know hang on a minute if Donald Trump for example keeps saying that other countries are worse affected by the straight of her moose being closed than America why is should Americans care and I thought his answer was interesting because it was it was a little bit different to what Donald Trump says um which was it was a bit more moderate which you would kind of expect from Marco Rubio Rubio which was effectively even if it's not direct indirectly this is bad for America so it has to be fixed Um, I think it is just hard to predict when it comes to whether we're in a stalemate, listening to your points made earlier, and the US administration is trying to save face on the stalemate or if they're slowly wearing it down and Iran's going to blink. And I don't think anyone quite knows, and speaking to some US defense figures recently, they they think Trump has the appetite to take action potentially, but he's now surrounded by people who are just worried about doing anything to make this drag out even longer.

[00:10:22]>> Right. So they believe it's not escalate to deescalate, it will be escalate to escalate.

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