Sen. Marco Rubio on President Trump pulling US troops out of Syria and the G-7 out of Florida

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Sen. Marco Rubio on President Trump pulling US troops out of Syria and the G-7 out of Florida

Republican Senator Marco Rubio joins Bret Baier on 'Special Report.'

This is a rush transcript from "The Story with Martha MacCallum," October 21, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, and the withdraw of his invitation to host the next G7 summit as his south Florida resort, just some of the big headlines tonight. Here to discuss them, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio from Capitol Hill. Senator, thanks for being here.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA.: Thanks for having me, Bret.

BAIER: First, I want to play the president at the cabinet meeting about this effort to pull the U.S. troops out of Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're working with the Kurds. We have a good relationship with the Kurds. And we never agreed to protect the Kurds. We've supported them for three-and-a-half to four years. We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.

And we helped them. Don't forget, we helped the Kurds. Everyone said the Kurds helped us. That's true. We helped the Kurds. They're no angels.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Your reaction to that, Senator?

RUBIO: Well, I think this is a lot more than about the Kurds. And I think it's a lot more than two choices. It's not just the choice of withdrawing or staying forever. I think there was a third alternative. And you got some insight into it by what the vice president and the secretary of state were able to achieve.

So I think the first thing I would point to is I think it was the abrupt nature of the withdrawal without any sort of planning about what would immediately happen that's really problematic. I would also say that it's helpful to ISIS. It's going to help them to reconstitute themselves, not just in Syria, but also crossing over into Iraq. I think it's helpful to Iran. It's going to give them more operating space. It's going to create leverage for them in that country where they can use to supply Hezbollah, attack Israel, attack Americans.

And by the way, I think the Iranians are going to go to the Turks and say, we've got a lot of leverage, we have a lot of groups operating out there.

You've got to help us evade sanctions if you want us to help you. And I also think they are going to use it to pressure us to get out of the remaining place we have in southern Syria which is used to buffer both Jordan and Israel.

And the last point I would make is that this is also really damaging for our international credibility. Now you're concerned Putin thinks, well, maybe I can test America in the Baltic states, or the Chinese think they can test us in the South China Sea or Taiwan. And I imagine allies around the world who are also questioning our reliability.

And I also have one more point, and that is allies in the region and around the world, also in Asia, who are now saying to themselves, maybe we are not as confident in America as we used to be. Maybe we should arm ourselves with nuclear weapons. You could have arms races now developing in Asia, in the Middle East.

So there's a lot to unpack here. There's no doubt that all of this was explained. And that's why planning, if you were going to do something like this, was really important. And that didn't happen either.

BAIER: But Senator, the president is essentially saying you can't stay there forever. Do see sense tonight that troops are somehow going to go back into Syria? There's some sense that they might be protecting oil fields. What's your sense of that tonight?

RUBIO: I can't answer that because 48 hours before this decision was made, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and I'm not blaming him, said we were going to be there for the foreseeable future. By the way, we are talking about 1,000 people. What I've heard is that we're not really leaving the Middle East. We are just relocating them over into Iraq. And from Iraq they are going to be conducting some of the same operations. And I saw a media report that we may leave some troops behind at some of these oil fields. But you know why? If we do that, it's because the Iranians are trying to get their hands on those oil fields, because it means revenue.

They can recoup all that money they spent in propping up Assad. Again, ultimately, we are not going to be there forever, but if you were going to begin the process of diminishing our presence, it should have been done with some planning, not simply sort of a one phone call thing. And that is as much as anything else part of this problem.

BAIER: So, what should be done now question?

RUBIO: That's a great question. I don't have an easy answer for that.

There are some problems that are very difficult to unpack when they happen.

I would be curious to see what ideas are floating out there about what we can do to continue to diminish Iran's ability to leverage off of Syria to attack us, to attack Israel, to threaten shipping in the Gulf and so forth.

But there's no easy answer to the question you just asked. The damage from this in terms of that sort of thought is going to be difficult to undo.

BAIER: I want to turn to another question, and that is the G7 summit. The thought that it was going to be at Doral, the president saying that this is the right decision, and then walking it back. Your thoughts on that?

RUBIO: There is no way they didn't know it wouldn't be controversial. So you almost wonder if they didn't do it -- the president likes to poke the media. He liked to poke outrage in his opponents. And so they had to have known that.

I have two thoughts about it. The first is I'm from Florida. I think it would be wonderful for Florida to have the G7, especially south Florida.

And it would be great for our community. I think it would be a really good host.

The flipside of it is I recognize that people are going to look at it and say, in the middle of everything that's going on, why would you do that?

It actually undermines your corruption argument that you've been making about Biden and so forth. And ultimately the president changed his mind on it. So I thought it would have been great for Florida, but I recognize the complications that it came with. It wasn't the end of the world. It probably also in hindsight wasn't the best decision. But it was good for Florida.

BAIER: This is the White House chief of staff described the decision this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICK MULVANEY, ACTING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The president isn't one for holding back his feelings and his emotions about something.

He was honestly surprised at the level of pushback. At the end of the day, he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: There's a lot of reaction to that last line.

RUBIO: I think what he meant is that that's the background he comes from.

He's a person from the hospitality business. He's thinking about it as a host for an event. That's what I think he meant by it.

But on the first part about the outrage and so forth, look, there's outrage about everything the president does. There are some out there that are outraged by everything his does, and there are some things he does that are outrageous. But on this front, I think he had to have known, my view anyway, that there would be some negative reaction to it. That said, like I said, that would have been great for Florida, but I understand the pushback against it. But it's a none-issue now, I guess.

BAIER: Last thing. The president talked to my colleague, Sean Hannity.

They just released a piece of it, this one about Ukraine and Democrats in Ukraine. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You hear about Ukraine, and you've been hearing about it. I heard Clinton was involved. I heard they got somebody who wrote the fake dossier, was it out of Ukraine, all of the things that happened. And I assume that the attorney general, I would like the attorney general to find out what's going on, because you know what, we are investigating corruption.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Is it wrong to investigate corruption in that phone call and what he's talked about since publicly when it comes to Ukraine and what has happened there?

RUBIO: Two separate things he talked about. The first is evidence that some of the stuff that happened in 2016 originated in Ukraine. We just conducted a very extensive two-year investigation in the Intelligence Committee. We haven't seen evidence of that. If there is, I would be interested in seeing it. That would be important. But we haven't seen it.

The second point about investigating corruption, I don't think there's a problem with that at all. I think where this got complicated is that it tied into Joe Biden, who at the time was leading in the polls in the Democratic primary and could very well be his opponent. And so you can just imagine the link of those two things, and it's probably a reason why he should not have raised it in that conversation. That said, obviously, that's where we are now, but I think that really -- it's not the corruption part that really got everybody stirred up, at least on the other side of the aisle and some on mine, but the link to Biden who was going to be his opponent. But the president is also right when he points to letters written by members of the Senate threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine if they didn't do certain. So it's a lot to unpack.

BAIER: Yes, there are a lot of things to unpack on a number of different issues, Senator. But if you, sitting there today, look at the impeachment efforts by Democrats, how do you think it plays out?

RUBIO: I think impeachment and removal of a president is one of the most extraordinary things anybody could ever do. If it reaches a trial in the Senate it will be the most important vote any of us will ever take, because you are literally saying we are going to cancel the results of a valid democratic election. And you're doing it, by the way, probably less than a year from a new information in which all this information will be out there.

And I'm still shocked at how people just take that lightly and just throw it around. I think something like that needs to be used very sparingly.

It's damaging. It's traumatic for the country. You thought the Kavanaugh thing was divisive. This would be that times 100 in terms of the trauma and divisiveness it will cost. It's an extraordinary measure that hurts the country no matter what the outcome of it is.

And ultimately, it should be based on two things -- the facts, all of the facts, and what's in the best interest of our country given that moment in time and the particulars of it. So a lot of people are so cavalier. There are people in the House that wanted to impeach the president before he was even sworn in. And I see others that are basically saying let's just circle the wagons and stifle this. This is a really big deal, and it's talked about in a very cavalier way by some. I think we should take that very seriously. Let it play out, let's get the facts, and then we'll act in accordance to what's in the best interest of the United States of America at that particular moment.

BAIER: Senator Marco Rubio up on Capitol Hill, we appreciate the time.

RUBIO: Thank you.

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