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– [Roger] This is Roger Simon and I'm at a Marco Rubio event in Ames, Iowa where the senator just spoke to a couple hundred people, and we had a chance to speak with him one on one. Before we get started, I've been empowered to ask you a very important question. You've been riding around Iowa like crazy, campaign. I want to make sure you didn't get any speeding tickets. – [Marco] (laughs) Not today. Not today, we're trying to avoid that. – [Roger] Because you know PJ Media is a small company, but we could scoop the New York Times here. – [Marco] Not today we didn't unfortunately, or fortunately. – [Roger] Ok, now we get to the serious news. Anyway, let's start with back at the beginning when you announced, and you made a lot of statements about a new American century and being a new kind of politician, a new way of looking at things. What is it about the old Democratic party you don't like, and how would you change it? Quickly. – [Marco] It's stale. I mean, it has no solutions for people that are struggling to make ends meet. It has no solutions for college students that are people that graduated with degrees that do not lead to jobs, that are stuck with debt. Have no solutions for us national security-wise. They have no strategic vision of America's role in the world, and they're stuck in the 20th century. I mean, their ideas are just to recycle things that we did 25 years ago in the hopes that they finally work, and they won't. In fact, they're disastrous. We need to become globally competitive again, economically. We need to empower our people with 21st century skills, and we need to once again reinvigorate our role in the world. We have to lead the free world. Without our leadership, chaos ensues. – [Roger] Alright, that's the negative about them. What's the positive about you? – [Marco] Well, ultimately I honestly believe that not just I, but our Republican party has the opportunity to be seen as the party of the future. The people that understand what life is like in this new century, and has ideas about how to make life in America better than it's ever been. So, we're going to have economic policies that make us globally competitive. We're going to have higher education policies that help people acquire skills that you need in this economy not the economy of 20 years ago. We're going to rebuild our military, and we're going to show our allies that they can rely on us and work with us to confront the challenges that the world now presents. – [Roger] Now, you're one of the first major Hispanic candidates for President of the United States.

You're Cuban-American.

How do you relate to Mexican-Americans? This is an interesting problem. I know the Hispanic from L.A.. I know the Hispanic community. It's little tensions. How do you cross over? – [Marco] I've never really focused on tensions. I mean the bottom line is the vast majority of Americans, especially those who come from immigrant families, come from families that are desperate and work really hard to give them the chance at a better life. And I believe the Republican party through our policies of limited government and free enterprise, offer the best opportunity for them to do that. We have to do a better job of convincing people and showing them that, but ultimately I think that's a winning message not just for Cuban-Americans or Mexican-Americans but for all Americans. – [Roger] Now the immigration issue has caught you in the cross-hairs a little bit because of this, and sometimes I've been reading a lot of the comments on blogs and so forth. They don't fully believe you yet that you've changed your approach. How do you speak to that? – [Marco] It's a hard issue because people have lost trust in the federal government. I'm just trying to find a solution for a problem that continues to bedevil us. You know, we continue to have illegal immigration problems in America that haven't been fixed. We still have a legal immigration system that isn't working well for our economy. And we still have 12, 13 million people who knows how many millions of people in this country, most of whom have been here for longer than a decade and may be here for the rest of their lives. We have to deal with all of that. The only thing I've said is the truth. We can't deal with all of that in one big piece of legislation. We found that out three years ago, or two years ago when the Senate tried to do it that way. But we do have to make progress on an issue. What we have now isn't good. – [Roger] Now, one person who obviously doesn't believe you is Ann Coulter who I notice in her new book, calls you Chuck Schumer's press secretary. Would you respond to that? – [Marco] I don't know anything about any new book or anything she said. Like, I'll tell people where I stand. I went into politics to try to solve problems. No one can dispute that illegal immigration and immigration in general as it stands today in America is a problem. My job is to try to figure out a way to fix it, and to make progress on it. And that's what I'll continue to do. We can debate how we do it, but I don't think there's any debate we have to do something to make this work better because we can't continue to have illegal immigration like we do. We can't continue to have an outdated legal immigration system that's primarily family-based, and at some point, we're going to have to address the fact one way or another that you have millions of people living here illegally. – [Roger] Let's switch over to a problem that concerns a lot of us. And that is that the Iran talks are going on right now. The Senate came up with a sort of compromise solution that put itself in the game. Do you think it has the power to stop this deal, if it's a terrible deal? – [Marco] Well, the Congress has the power to stop it from the perspective of the American sanctions. Unfortunately this president has basically given away the international sanctions which is the most effective part of it. I still think that the future president, no matter what deal happens, will have the opportunity to basically remove the national security waver and reimpose US sanctions against Iran. But the truth is the international sanctions are probably gone now given what this president's already done. – [Roger] So, June 30th is the tentative date. It'll slip again maybe. But on June 30th, do you think, where will you stand? How will you guys block what that is? – [Marco] Well, look. Ultimately I early on said, that any deal that allowed Iran to enrich uranium was unacceptable. If they want nuclear power which they don't need because they're an oil rich country, but if they want it, they can have it the way most countries in the world have it. They import the enriched material. The fact that they want to enrich it themselves is to me, alongside the fact that they're developing long range rockets, is evidence that at some point they're going to want a nuclear weapon. And this deal will actually make it easier for them to do that legally from an international law perspective. So, it's going to be very hard for me to support any deal unless they really, really surprise me. There's a process now in place for us to review it. Ultimately it'll depend on whether or not we can get 13 Democrats to see it our way. So far, many of them who talk tough, have shown their willingness to cave in to the White House under pressure. – [Roger] And what about Isis? The President, I know you're probably among those who feel that pulling out of Iraq has lead to Isis. What can be done now? What would you do because if you're president, you're still going to have Isis to deal with on day one? – [Marco] So, Isis exists for two reasons. One because of the security vacuum left behind after the American pull out in Iraq. And the other is because of the way this admisitration bungled what was happening in Syria which is where they first really got reinvigorated. So, the way forward is two-fold. On the long term, they have to be defeated on the ground, and I believe have to be defeated by Sunni forces on the ground. That means Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis, Iraqis, and some Kurds too that confront them and defeat them on the ground. But as they build up their capability to do that, in the interim, we have to shut off the growth of Isis that right now is being propelled by propaganda. We have to subject them to high-profile humiliating defeats. So additional air strikes, special operations projects, so that the world can see not only that Isis is not invincible, but that any time they're actually confronted, they meet a disastrous end. And I think that alone will slow down both their donors and the recruits that they're attracting globally. And then ultimately, we can empower local forces to defeat them on the ground with the assistance of US air strikes and special operation operators. – [Roger] Alright, day one on a Rubio Presidency. What is your priority? Where would you go, day one? – [Marco] Well, there's a lot to do. Primarily, we would have to look at, for example, a host of different executive orders that I believe have held us back as a nation, whether they're regarding labor relations or regarding other issues in our economy. I also think it's important to deal with the Iran deal. and lifting the national security waver that the President will be using and reimpose those American sanctions. I think it's critical for us as well to order our agencies of government to begin a careful evaluation, a serious proposal to reduce regulatory burden on the American, on the nation. I would go to Congress and ask for supplemental authority to increase defense spending, so that we can once again begin to invest in the technologies that will allow us to address multiple threats. China, Russia, Iran, radical jihadists, cyber crime, space warfare which the Chinese are developing and investing in. There's a lot of challenges, and it'll take more than one day, but we'll certainly have our priorities ready. – [Roger] One last technical question. The Republican party faces a weird situation. They've got 45 people running for President as of, or is it 46? I don't know. Anyway, you're among the front runners. However, how do you see this going forward in order to prevent regional bloodshed or what Regan said about… – [Marco] We're going to have a competitive primary and from it, we're going to have a stronger nominee. Blessed as a party to have so many talented people, credible candidates running. It'll be a vibrant, spirited debate. Ultimately virtually any one of our major candidates would be a vast improvement over Barack Obama not to mention Hilary Clinton. I'm confident that we're going to have a good chance as anyone, to be that nominee. And, look, I think we're blessed to have so many good candidates. The Democrats can't even find one. – [Roger] How many people do you think should be on the stage in these debates? – [Marco] I'm going to leave that to the organizers of that thing and I'm not really going to get involved in the daily grind and process of it all. I'm going to go anywhere that I'm invited to give a speech about and talk to people about what we stand for, show them what we've done in the past, what we plan to do in the future, and hopefully inspire them not to give us just the chance to be the nominee, but ultimately the chance to be their President. – [Roger] Alright, well thank you very much Marco Rubio. (funky music)