“The campaign has become negative, one that is about attacking and trying to bring down Marco Rubio”.
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“Marco Rubio has a disaster on his finances”, Trump said.
Marco Rubio, under fire for his use of a Republican Party charge card, released two years of previously undisclosed American Express statements Saturday in an effort to turn the page on a controversy that has started to weigh on his White House bid. “When you check his credit cards take a look at what he has done with the Republican Party when he had access, what he had to put back in, and whether or not something should have happened”, Trump said in New Hampshire.
Rubio has said he paid for all his personal charges but has acknowledged that the expenses were confusing. Nevertheless, Rubio supporters & his marketing crusade argue in that he spent considerably lower than previous Florida Home speakers & in that Rubio isn’t concealing monetary errors.
“These statements are more than 10 years old, and the only people who ask about them today are the liberal media and our political opponents”, senior Rubio strategist Todd Harris said.
Mr. Rubio had already disclosed the biggest personal expense listed in the records released Saturday-$3,756 to Iberia Tiles in October 2005.
“If there was a personal expense, I paid it”, Rubio said.
Indeed, Marco Rubio steadfastly denies wrongdoing with regard to his public and personal spending, brushing off barbs by fellow GOP contender Donald Trump with particular candor.
“Any personal charges were paid by me directly”. At the CNBC presidential debate last week, the real estate mogul said he used the bankruptcy laws “of the country to my benefit”, just as countless other businessmen have done. During his successful 2010 bid for U.S. Senate, news broke that Rubio had charged items such as grocery bills, plane tickets for his wife and repairs to the family minivan to the card. “If there was a personal expense, I paid it. If it was a party expense, the party paid it. Now, I recognize in hindsight, I would do it different to avoid all this confusion”. Rubio wrote 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”.
In 2010, a Florida man filed an ethics complaint against Rubio for his misuse of the state party card, but two years later, the state ethics commission tossed out the case.
Before Rubio was a US senator, he was Speaker of the House in Florida. But Cruz labeled Rubio a moderate, one of four categories that the Cruz campaign believes groups the field.
A super PAC supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton demanded to know Wednesday why Rubio was waiting so long to release the records, wondering, “What is he hiding?”.
“I obviously don’t come from a wealthy family”, he said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America”.
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Rubio said the newspaper report was not accurate adding each expense on that card had been detailed in the official filings of the party.
