CNN host Anderson Cooper recently intervened between Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former President Donald Trump slinging savage debate insults after Rubio was tapped to help his 2016 rival prepare for upcoming debates via Mediaite. Rubio is a rumored Trump VP candidate.
The Hill reported that on his visit to Washington D.C. on Thursday Trump met with Rubio and Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) intending to run through policy and other topics ahead of the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle.
Cooper recently began his segment on Monday pointing out that within the Republican Party, many on the current list of Trump supporters were “once harsh critics”: “Case in point, the Republican senator who was tapped to help his former rival and tormenter prepare for the upcoming CNN presidential debate.”
The CNN team also ran a supercut of the pair trading insults in the 2016 GOP primaries, referring to Rubio as one of Trump’s “favorite targets.”
There’s Trump dismissively calling the Florida senator the “little guy” and making fun of his ears. Then, Rubio famously hit back mocking the size of Trump’s hands: “You know what they say about men with small hands…”
Trump retorted with a “guarantee” that there was “no problem” with size when it came to his anatomy, hands and all.
In her report, Kaye pivoted to the more pointed criticism of Rubio’s beltway insider debate style laid out by former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who blasted the senator’s rigid attack line on outgoing President Barack Obama.
“That’s what Washington DC does,” Christie said at the time. “The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisors gave him.”
Following the cut, Cooper asked Kaye about the Florida senator as a potential running mate, which she said was “complicated” not only because of their “rocky history” but because of “a provision of the constitution that says electoral college votes from their home state of Florida can’t go to both of them.”
