Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday he's prepared to vote for more COVID relief, as the American people need help, but he insisted he's not going to "get punked" into voting for the Democrats' $1.9 trillion COVID bill because it's a "fraud."
"You put out a bill, you call it COVID relief," the Florida Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "The problem is that’s not what the bill is. That’s what the packaging is, but on the inside, it’s all kinds of other things. You know, ultimately it aims to get money into the hands of Planned Parenthood. What does Planned Parenthood have to do with COVID?"
The bill also bails out some states that were "irresponsible even before the pandemic," said Rubio.
He added that he's for many other kinds of aid, including individual payments for Americans that former President Donald Trump had been seeking at the end of his presidency, but "we shouldn't be pressured into voting for something that isn't what it says it is, and that people are going to regret once this thing passes and they see what's in it."
The senator also panned President Joe Biden's actions on immigration, saying that even during his campaign he was sending out the impression that illegal immigrants would be welcome to come to the United States.
"These folks don’t get here on their own. There are traffickers that go out and recruit people and say, ‘Hey, I can get you into America for $5,000, $3,000, if you bring a kid with you, or if you send your kid with somebody else,'" said Rubio. "In Honduras in particular you’re seeing a lot of activity from these trafficking networks. And, you know, the government there doesn’t have the ability to stop it, but even if they did, they don’t have the incentive."
The ensuing rush on the border is creating "all kinds of chaos and a humanitarian crisis," he added.
"We don’t know how many kids die on the way here, how many are sexually abused, how many are killed," said Rubio. "We have no idea the horrible things that happen on that journey here.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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