Marco Rubio on 2024 election, Catholic vote, and future

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 9, 2024 / 10:00 am

As the senior senator from the Sunshine State sees it, Donald Trump’s winning electoral coalition, in which he substantially grew support from voters across multiple demographics, including Catholics, portends a promising political realignment and future for the country.

In a Nov. 7 interview on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” Florida Catholic Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said “the Republican Party that exists now is a Republican Party that is fueled by men and women of every race [and] ethnicity in the country that you can imagine who are largely working people and small-business owners.” 

“They are not elites on Wall Street,” Rubio said. “They are not elites in New York. They are not elites in Washington, D.C. These are people that work for a living. They take a shower after work, not before work, and they’re raising their families. That’s the core of our party. That’s the core of the Republican Party. That is the coalition that drove us to this enormous win and a majority in the Senate, and hopefully a majority in the House.” 

With about 92% of the national vote tallied, Trump won more than 73.6 million votes compared with Vice President Kamala Harris’ 69.3 million votes — the first time a Republican president has won the popular vote since former president George W. Bush won it in 2004. 

Trump is also on pace to win every swing state in the 2024 presidential election, although two of those states — Nevada and Arizona — are still tallying votes. If his leads in those two states remain, he will have won 312 electoral college votes compared with Harris’ 226. This represents the largest electoral college victory for a Republican since former President George H.W. Bush won 426 electoral college votes in 1988. 

A Washington Post exit poll showed Trump winning the Catholic vote by a 15-point margin in 2024, after only winning it by a 5-point margin in 2020. The president-elect also grew support among Hispanic men, winning nearly half of their votes, and with Black men, winning about one-fifth of their votes. 

Rubio on the Catholic vote

“I can speak from personal experience as a Catholic and American and someone who voted and supported Donald Trump,” Rubio told Arroyo about the growth in Catholic support.

“Our faith instills in us, hopefully, a set of values that are ancient and tested and proven and have been true for successful societies for thousands of years,” he said. “We are now living in an era where really important people, really powerful people, are telling us that those values are not just wrong, they’re hateful.” 

Rubio noted that under President Joe Biden’s administration, there has been an effort to include biological men who identify as women into women’s sports and messages in schools that encourage children to identify as a gender different from their biological sex. 

“We’re being told that if you speak out against these things, you’re some evil, retrograde, neanderthal, backwards-thinking person,” the senator said. “I think there’s a real resistance to that and the fact that we have very powerful people in charge of powerful institutions who openly not just undermine but mock the values that our faith tries to instill in us.”

Rubio also accused the Biden administration of “selective prosecutions of peaceful protesters outside of abortion clinics who were treated worse … than the rioters who burned down major cities in this country.”

When asked about the growth of Trump’s support from Hispanic Americans, Rubio, whose parents immigrated from Cuba, said “our primary identity for most people is not your ethnicity or the color of your skin — your primary identity is that you work somewhere or you have a small business or you’re raising children.”

“As a result,” Rubio added, “you’re worried about things like how much it costs to buy groceries, how unaffordable is at the end of every month in this economy that we’re living in today, how you fear every day you turn on the television and some news story about some criminal from another country that’s here illegally just raped or murdered someone. I mean, those things concern people of all walks of life.”

Rubio contends that Trump’s plan to curtail illegal migration over the southern border is a position that aligns with most voters. He said the desire to bring an end to the war in Ukraine motivated voters as well.

Future role

When asked whether he is seeking a role in the Trump administration, Rubio said he had not been asked to serve in a position at this time and has not discussed it with them. 

“I want to be a part … of turning that movement and that vote and that coalition you outlined, turning it into action so that it becomes a governing coalition in this country that allows us to actually get good things done for America,” Rubio said. “Whether that’s in the Senate or helping in his administration, that’s a conversation we may have, and we’ll figure out what the right choice is.”