Rubio Speaks to AIPAC Florida Delegation

to answer your question I'm just going to address two points the first is like you saw me moving around like there's like this Sunbeam that's coming right through that thing like blinding me over here and but I get a 10 out of it uh the second about the proba was actually these people from C pink which are a bunch of well you they're weird people but um the on top of that you said I was very calm I don't know how calm I was to begin with I mean I feel very comfortable pushing back on the tap they were raising but the other is and I'll be frank with you I was in a bad mood to be get with that day cuz I had eaten and I so they caught me at a really bad time so uh so anyways and on your question so there's the good news there's good news good news bad news let's start with the bad news the bad news is you're having a witness to sort of back and forth because if you put up a bill on funding for Israel repentance it's tied up in this broader the border the um and the boorder is a significant issue yesterday we had the um uh the director of the FBI in front of the intelligence committee and I asked them because I kind of know the answer but we have to be careful how we talk about it but I said there are facilitation networks I are you concerned about any of these groups around the world that traffic people they move people they move people around the world of any of them that have links to terrorism like Isis or Hezbollah and he said yeah as a matter of fact there's one I got to be careful what I say he said but there's one in particular that were very concerned about it has facilitators who have links to Isis so if you have facilit if Isis owns a trafficking Network they probably use it to move people around and make money but they'll also use it to move terrorists and and we know for a fact as I speak to here now and I'll talk more about Iran in a second they're trying to kill Americans in America we've already had two indictments of people that are trying to hire assassins to kill Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and president Trump and others Iran trying to create conduct assassinations inside the United States for the life of me I don't know how you can be sitting at any table anywhere in the world with these people negotiating anything when they're trying to assassinate people here in the country tied up in a bad new for about that so that's bad new here's the good number one is I think it it's going to happen I just there's too much of a strong bipartisan support it's just a question of the mechanism by which it happens so like next week the whole week is going to be like Groundhog Day for us it's going to be the same as last week right the house is supposed to pass pass the second half of the Appropriations bills on Wednesday they'll send it to us on Thursday we'll have to vote on it Thursday or Friday and then after that passes I think you'll see more focus on those two things uh on on the on the supplemental spending the other piece of good news is that the so we have to authorize the spending and the spending's already been authorized it's already authorized by law for 10 years the memorandum of understanding between the US and Israel is codified we codified it I think two years ago uh was a bill that I sponsored one with Senator Coons so the administration continues to have the authority to transfer what will and you can and the way it's written they can actually uh pull forward future years authorizations to use now the problem is obviously if you're borrowing from the future these weapon needs are still going to be there down the road so we're still going to have to do something eventually but it's why it hasn't reached that sense of urgency yet I will raise one more point and that is that I think as part of this conversation now we have to increasingly make sure that the aid or whatever we do with money is not conditioned in a way that sort of like you can't ask Israel you have go we support you to win this war but you can't do the things it's going to take to win the war the truth of the matter is the longer it takes for them to go into some of these places they need to go to achieve the Strategic objectives the more suffering was going to be laws Hamas the longer Hamas is allowed to be a functioning entity with the capability to conduct attacks the more suffering is going to be across the board so why we're prolonging this is unnecessary but in an effort to appease competing political interests in American politics they they they we're in this inconsistent position of well with Israel 100% unless you do things that you need to do to win and if you do those things then we're going to limit the we that we provide you and and the resources so the good news is I think something will happen the good news is it's already codified so we still have some time the bad news is that we have to keep an eye on is it hasn't happened yet and we have to make sure that there's safeguards against it being conditioned in a way that I think undermine the goal we all have which is to for this to end quickly and with the defeat of Hamas as an entity that can do what it did on 7th of October I also think it's important to sort of figure out I think it's a mistake it's a mistake a lot of people are making to view this thing as just the latest chapter in a Israeli Palestinian conflict this is much broader than that at the source of all of this is one simple driver and that if Iran wants to spread their Shia Islamic revolution throughout the region and you can see how they're trying to achieve it objectively the two things standing in their way there are two things standing in way of Iran achieving their Regional dominance the first is Israel because they can't defeat Israel in a frontal War and the second is the presence of the United States in the region and so their goal if you if the Iranians were here now and they were to share with us their strategy what they would say is I doubt they would be here you know probably wouldn't have a great welcome but um if they came here to Washington and they shared their objectives with us the objective is let's use these militia groups that we sponsor they call them proxies they really are just agents of the arangment in Syria in Iraq now in Yemen in the West Bank in Gaza across the region let's use these groups to attack Israel but attack America and what they hope is that America will say okay the Middle East is too problematic we need to get out of there we need to remove ourselves from Jordan we need to remove ourselves from Iraq from Syria small presence we need to get out of there once we are gone then the Iranians can now use Syria and Iraq to Target Jordan and they will go in and take the Jordan once they take Jordan and under my Jordan then then their goal is to make Israel an un livable place their goal is not to the Israeli military front it is to basically make Israel a place you just can't live because you're constantly being attacked from all sides by multiple different groups all who have some different causes but all United by the goal of the destruction of the Jewish state to make Israel an unlivable place with an economy that doesn't function with a government that has no Revenue because its economy doesn't function a place that people no longer want to visit or can no longer live there because life is that's what their goal is and once that happens then they will achieve the Strategic objective that unites all of them that is to have a Zone from the river to the sea with no Jews Drive every Jew out from the river to the Sea as they like to say that's what they go is and they won't stop there they want Bahrain they want the UAE they want the other Gulf Kingdom so now they make Israel un livable and it collapses they drive America out they take Lebanon they take Syria they take Iraq and what I mean by take is maybe they're not the government of that place but I mean they control whoever the government of that place is now they become a regional power that is their V and that's what behind Hamas does not exist Hamas does not have the weapons Hamas does not have the resources they don't have the money to where millions of dollars to build these tunnels not these millions of dollars did not go to hospitals okay did not go to farming did not go to build an economy did not go to schools they spent millions of millions of dollars building a tunnel Network where do they get all this money from the answer is from Iran where do they get the advanced Weaponry what are they who's these getting these weapons that they have now these are this is a band of pirates basically who Advanced weaponry and where do they have the overhead imagery and the and the geolocation technology to find where ships are and to attack them you think about that what they're doing to global Shipping right now um the Chinese by the way they have great rates on their insurance because their ships aren't being attacked but everybody else's ships are being attacked and um and the price of goods all over the world is going to go up by a band of pirates who have somehow gotten access to oneway uavs guided missiles with long range capabilities uh to threaten global Shipping in the Red Sea all of them Prov byon Hezbollah agent of Iran um we talk about and Hamas is the same thing and so October 7th is a horrifying day but it's just one element of a much broader strategy and we have to come to grips with that as policy makers up here that um the Iranian ambition goes far beyond simply supporting these groups of what they call the access of resistance it is to drive America out of the region destroy the Jewish State and become the dominant Regional power it's how they Envision themselves and we have to accept that that is at the core of everything that's happening if there was not this radical Shia clerics in tyon none of these other problems would be at the level that they are right now and all of them will be much easier to face and that is at the core of all of our challenges that we face in that part today and so even as we provide assistance to Israel to ensure that they can continue to defend themselves and to defeat their enemies we have to recognize that the broader problem here the head of this snake is in tyon it's in tyon and until that problem is confronted and we accept it for what it is we can't truly begin to solve it and and so and there's extraordinary challenges in this regard because the Iranians have continue now to develop long range missiles with capabilities now to reach Europe and all of the Middle East and one day they'll be able to threaten America I mean if they continue to move on the pace they are right now they will one day possess and I don't mean one day 20 years from now I mean one day perhaps before the end of this decade possess intercontinental ballistic missiles with the capability reaching a continental United States and now they become immune to pressure now they can do anything they want because in the end they can threaten you with a nuclear strike so these are very very tenuous times and uh and one which we need to continue to be clear and firm on and it goes back to the point that that I've made from the beginning we can go into all the details that are you know everybody has their own opinions on here about different aspects that keep coming up that this notion you know if we live in a perfect world and all this we don't live in a perfect world we don't we don't live inop live in reality and um no matter how much the administration or others like to talk about things like two-state Solutions you have to ask yourself who would run that second state and right now the only choices are groups that want the destruction of the Jewish State that's a pretty tough thing to people ask people to agree to and that is when you turn over sovereignty and land to people who will use it as they've always used land if they've required to launch attacks against you and try to kill your civilians so um you know it's it's a tough time and it's one that requ some seriousness and how we approach this it really isn't one that can become politicized I do want to share one more thing because it's in the vein of everything we've discussed and it is troubling to me and I this is a point I used to make for a long time and I made it for different reasons and what I used to say is the support that Israel enjoys in Congress today is the product of 20 or 30 years of work so what you see here now is basically 20 to 30 years of work and advocacy and awareness and understanding of of it and receive strong bipartisan support and that I hope will continue but what is public policy in America going to look like 20 years AG 20 years from now but what if would look like 20 years from I used to say 20 years maybe I should say 10 or even five you want to know what public policy in America is going to look like in 5 to 10 years you need to go to a college campus Because those people are going to graduate from there and they're going to run for office and they're going to graduate from there and run businesses and they're going to graduate from there and become staffers we already have we already have members of the permanent bureaucracy who have signed on to letters anous by the way because they're cowards I don't have the guts to sign on the letter with your name on it but basically you know writing letters about how we're supporting genocide and all these sorts of things that's already embedding itself but these people will continue to climb eventually one of them will probably be nominated to be a secretary of state or Secretary of Defense and we won't even know they signed the letter because they signed it anonymously so I do think there's a real concern that I have 5 to 10 years from maybe less because if you want to know what the future of American public policy looks like it's graduating from our schools right now and not just any school but the most elite schools in the country the ones that are supposed to be producing our Future Leaders which makes you wonder whether we maybe need to pick some different schools to be elite schools but I also makes you understand the challenge before us um and um you know the state of the union and night the president was about 15 minutes late and one of the reasons why 15 minutes late is because a bunch of protesters Hamas supporters tried to block the motor C now you know I told people there's no excuse for being lady as a helicopter you know you can just fly here but um to drive through that but it's just another example yesterday we had a bunch of disruptions in the intelligence committee not a week goes by that we don't have people in the hallway and look people can express themselves anywh they want the one that really Burns me this is a pet peeve but I think it's an important pet peeve the one that really Burns me is people that are in this country on student visas yes okay you're here as a student visa or whatever visa and you're suppor of Hamas if you showed up somewhere and asked for a visa to come to the United States and they ask you do you support Hamas yes I'm very supportive probably wouldn't give you the Visa I hope um but somehow you're already here now you get to stay and I've asked repeatedly why aren't we deporting people like and I'm all for free speech and I'm all for the freedom of expression but these aren't Americans these are visitors to our country and um who are you organizing these in the street to confuse and harass it is sad to hear so many of my friends whose kids have begun to hide their Jewish identity hi the Jewish identity uh because of fear of what life is like on some of these campuses I think we've been blessed in Florida most University of Florida my alma m is yeah I I like all the other schools too guys I'm just mentioning that one because my friend is not the president there Ben s my son attends there it has the largest population of Jewish students of any school in the country and they've been fantastic at at supporting them and and supporting everyone but in a lot of other communities it's not the case and we'll hear more about it now with spring break as young people come back home and tell their parents that's why I'm starting to hear these stories and it's just really a heartbreaking I never frankly thought I'd ever live to see the day where that was the case in the United States but that's what we're facing and that's relevant not just because it's annoying and dangerous because that's what's going to our going to look like in 10 or 15 years uh if if we don't continue to step up our efforts not simply to Advocate but to educate the realities of everything that's happening in the region from Iran down to the history behind some of this so um you know one that that um on social media like for a while these videos are going out about colonizers and ridiculous things of this nature um it's they're getting this from somewhere right somebody is edting these thought processes uh in the minds of people end up making important decisions in this country so in any event um I think other than that it's going well but um but these are the challenges we face and you can always count on us because I believe it's not stuff I deeply believe I think it's the national interest of our country and it's also the right place to be as a people and as a nation so take you to count on me on all of that