Sen. Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator from Florida, has announced that he will work toward 45th President Donald Trump’s goal of delaying the GOP Senate leadership vote in a bid to keep Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from retaining the role.
“Today I will try to postpone the GOP Senate leadership vote,” wrote Rubio, publicly aligning himself with Trump. “A vote won’t solve our internal differences, it will make them worse.”
Rubio called for “genuine unity” among the Republicans, and said it will not be possible if McConnell and his allies force a vote today.
“We aren’t going to have genuine unity until we make big changes to both our campaign & legislative efforts,” he wrote. “That will NEVER happen if we vote today.”
Today I will try to postpone the GOP Senate leadership vote
A vote won’t solve our internal differences,it will make them worse
We aren’t going to have genuine unity until we make big changes to both our campaign & legislative efforts
That will NEVER happen if we vote today
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 16, 2022
McConnell already faces one leadership challenge from Sen. Rick Scott, who many believe McConnell publicly spurned earlier this year.
Scott attempted to offer a vision to voters ahead of the election, and called it the Republican plan to “save America.” CNN notes that McConnell openly dismissed the points of Scott’s plan, and warned Republicans to stay away from it for fear that Democrats could use it to campaign against them.
As the coalition to oust McConnell grows, Rubio is not the first former enemy of 45th President Donald Trump to join.
Rubio, who once made a derogatory remark about the size of Trump’s “hands” during the 2016 campaign, is joined by Sen. Ted Cruz, who attempted a fierce fight to deny Trump the Republican nomination the same year.
In a podcast that went viral this week, Cruz slammed McConnell’s behavior as “indefensible” and accused him of “abandoning” America First candidates over his feud with Trump.
Watch an excerpt of Cruz’s remarks on Spreely.video:
“I you look at this last cycle, Mitch McConnell pulled the money out of Arizona,” said Cruz. “We could have won — won Arizona.”
Cruz raged, “We nearly won Arizona and abandoning Blake Masters was indefensible.”
This news and commentary by Tom Pappert originally appeared on Valiant News.
