Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said four times Monday that he was "going to serve six years in the United States Senate" — but never ruled out that he'd leave the legislative body to pursue another run at the White House in 2020.
During a debate against Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, Rubio — who was elected to the Senate in 2010, then ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary — said he's "going to serve six years in the United States Senate, God willing, and I'm looking forward to it," Politico reported.
However, asked explicitly if he'd serve a full term, Rubio four times repeated the phrase: "I'm going to serve in the Senate for the next six years, God willing."
Per Politico:
"Asked if that meant he wouldn't run for president in 2020, Rubio returned to the well: 'Not only am I going to . . . serve in the Senate over the next six years, we're going to get a lot done, God willing, over the next six years on behalf of the state.'"
That, of course, all depends on what he says God wants him to do. Becoming president wasn't "God's plan," Rubio said after he dropped out of the presidential race in March. After that, he said that he was looking forward to becoming a "private citizen" after his term ends at the end of the year. That was something he'd been saying since 2015. So maybe repetition is the problem.
One of Rubio's more embarrassing moments (aside from his dry mouth, and small hands) was when Rubio repeated four times, "Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing . . ." during a presidential primary debate in February.
Even after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pointed out live that Rubio was repeating himself, the first-term Florida senator returned to the phrase in his rebuttal.
And, as The Washington Post's Dave Weigel pointed out at the time, "dispel with" is grammatically incorrect:
Shares