The Republican Party of Florida paid for none of the senator’s personal expenses.
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It’s more like a tempest in a teapot, argue campaign strategists who spoke with FoxNews.com on Friday. Not a bad headline for a campaign that has sustained heavy incoming fire from Democrats, the media and Republican rivals alike in recent weeks, suggesting that interested parties view the Rubio surge as real and threatening.
‘For years I’ve heard about Marco and his credit cards, ‘ said Donald Trump, according to NBC News. “He is a disaster with his credit cards”, the businessman and television personality told a press conference. The candidate’s campaign followed up by releasing statements from 2005 and 2006.
In his 2012 memoir “An American Son” that almost all were for party business, “but from time to time a few personal expenses were charged to the card as well”.
Speaking to ABC the same day, he said: “The Republican party never paid a single expense of mine – personal expense”. That’s the question critics from both parties are asking this week as the GOP presidential candidate’s past financial decisions continue to make headlines. After a series of strong debate performances, Rubio has started to gain traction, though he still remains behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the polls.
“Marco paid his personal charges directly to American Express”, the campaign said in its release Saturday.
Rubio insists he used his own money to reimburse Republicans for personal charges, though his campaign conceded over the weekend “it could not provide full documentation proving Mr. Rubio had paid the personal charges himself because the corresponding personal bank statements were too old to be retrievable”. Likewise in 2010, the Tampa Bay Times discovered that Rubio “double-billed the Republican Party of Florida and state taxpayers for eight flights while he was House Speaker”. With Trump, Jeb and the DNC loudly demanding to see the “risky” or “disastrous” documents he was “hiding”, Rubio finally let the evidence drop with a reverberating thud.
“I find it ironic that the only person running for president that’s ever declared bankruptcy – four times in the last 25 years – is attacking anyone on finances”, Rubio told reporters in Concord, N.H., after filing paperwork to get on the state’s presidential ballot.
An outside group backing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, questioned Mr. Rubio for not releasing the missing statements. Lawmakers were investigated, and at least one of his friends went to jail. Todd Harris, a top Rubio aide, offered a simple explanation to The Fact Checker: “We went back and looked. I don’t think so”.
But Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) brought the issue to the forefront on Thursday, telling CNN that Rubio had been a core figure in the bill’s creation. So if he allows it to define him that is a problem.
The other reason he’s hitting back is because he wants to change the subject. As far as we can tell, there appears to be just one instance from 2007 to 2009 where he repaid directly to the party for a charge he should not have made on the party card. If anything, they may empathize with Rubio as another American debt holder.
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“It was just an issue that was contorted by my political opponents in 2010”, he said.
