Marco Rubio praised violence to kiss up to Trump, but watch him jump off the T-train | Opinion

Nobody reads political tea leaves like Marco Rubio — and acts on them with shameless opportunism.

On the Sunday before Election Day, Rubio stooped as low as it gets to boost Donald Trump’s chances of winning Florida.

The Republican senator from Miami didn’t give a damn about what his words — in boastful praise of violence by Trump supporters in Texas — could provoke in his divided hometown.

He was all in for Trump — and Rubio’s own protagonism in a victory was all that mattered.

Standing before an already riled up MAGA crowd at the Opa-locka airport, a bullish Rubio referenced the caravan of Trump supporters in pick-up trucks who tried to force a Joe Biden bus off the road while traveling from San Antonio to Austin.

“I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas,” Rubio said. “Did you see it? All the cars on the road, we love what they did. But here’s the thing they don’t know: We do that in Florida every day. “

Then, in the same breath, he praised the boat parades.

“I love seeing the boat parades . . . we thank all the great patriots.”

In praise of crime for Trump

Rubio cast as patriots people who could have potentially injured or even killed others exercising their democratic right to campaign, comparing them to those who take their politics out to the sea.

The frenzied crowd cheered the hometown boy from West Miami with presidential ambitions, the same one who, in 2016, called Trump what he is, a “con man.” All was forgotten the minute Trump delivered a Republican victory that year, no matter what he stood for, no matter how much he embraced dictators in Russia, China and North Korea.

Abetting the degradation of the United States in the eyes of the free world, driving a divisive wedge at home in Florida — and betraying Miami’s immigrant soul to embrace Trump? No problem for Rubio.

After Trump’s unexpected win over Hillary Clinton, he became the amigo and Rubio the sycophant who had Trump’s back in the Senate, particularly during the Judiciary Committee’s investigation into Russia election interference and the Ukraine scandal.

So, who cares now if the FBI is investigating the Texas highway harassment as a possible crime?

Echoing Trump’s own praise of the criminal act is small peanuts compared to all that Rubio has covered up for Trump in the name of political chess and his 2024 ambition for another presidential run.

Or, in the name of auditioning for the Secretary of State spot in a second term Trump cabinet that may never be.

No, Rubio didn’t give one iota of a thought to the welfare of his hometown, Miami-Dade, where aggressive Trump supporters have tried to intimidate voters and staged actos de repudio, acts of repudiation a la Cuba at Versailles restaurant, calling Democrats “Comunista!

Rubio is counting on voters to forget that he egged on that kind of violence, praised it as something we just do in Florida. But here it is for the record.

2020 election calculus

Guataquear is what Rubio does best.

Literally, it means to sow the ground with a hoe called a guataca.

But in Cuban parlance, it also means to kiss up to somebody for the sake of personal benefit. It means having the gift for gab, but in a sinister way.

Long after Trump leaves office, we’ll have Miami.

Marco Rubio should have thought about that when he put Miamians in danger.

And for what?

Trump may have won Florida, but he’s losing the election.

Now watch how fast Rubio jumps off the Trump train.

Or dances away doing that thing he does, where he talks out of both sides of his mouth.

Watch how he makes room for himself in a Joe Biden win.

As the country woke up Friday to a Biden surge in Georgia, thanks to the Clayton County heirs of civil-rights icon John Lewis. All a bitter Rubio could come up with was another tired tweeted proverb.

“Scoundrels, villains, are they who deal in crooked talk,” he wrote.

Proverbs 6:12

Was he talking about Trump’s madman assault on democracy Thursday night as he saw Biden support solidify in battleground states?

Hard to tell.

“Crooked talk” is one of the things that Marco Rubio does best.

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©2020 Miami Herald

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