Fox News "The Story with Martha McCallum" - Transcript Interview with Marco Rubio

Interview

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Florida Senator Marco Rubio joins me now. Senator Rubio, always good to see you. Thank you for being here tonight.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA.: Thank you.

MACCALLUM: So those two things first. Do you agree with the, side with the doctor who says that Florida is now like Wuhan in the beginning? And do you trust the numbers in your home state?

RUBIO: Well, it's not like Wuhan, because we don't know what Wuhan was like, because their numbers weren't real, and that's the first. And they were cooking numbers on purpose, trying to make it look better than it actually was.

Look, it's bad. I mean, we have a lot of infections, a lot of numbers. We see the numbers. We see the testing. I don't - I've talked repeatedly over the last four weeks with the administrator of the largest public health hospital here, the public sector hospital here. It's going to be a strain, but they are managing it as best they can. I don't think we're in that situation or even some of the things you saw in New York.

So, look, it's bad. It's not great. But I don't think we're anywhere - I don't think comparing us to Wuhan is probably a bit too far, given the fact that one was catastrophic. They had government - they had hospital overruns there. We don't have that here. And we don't know what Wuhan's real numbers were, because they didn't tell us.

So, on the first point about the tests. Yes, look, that doesn't mean the positives that they sent to the state, we're not positive, those numbers are real and those cases are real. What it would do, however, is influenced the positivity rate, right. The number of - if you have labs that are only forwarding the tests that are positive and not the ones that - the numbers or the ones that are negative, then obviously your positivity rate, which is what a lot of people are keeping an eye on, is going to be higher than it needs to.

MACCALLUM: Well, what do you think - well, first of all, I want to go back to the what you just said. Because that the report is that Miami-Dade is now at its max. They don't have any more ICU beds there. Then we're also hearing some reports of shortages and some places have PPE shortages and all of that. Is that what you're seeing? I mean, that's not good.

RUBIO: Well, - yes, so the PPE strain is real, simply because these things continue to be used. And by the way, about 40 percent of the patients that are hospitalized and identified as COVID patients may be there for an unrelated reason. That's good. They're not being treated for COVID. The bad news is though, you have to use PPE, you have to isolate them, it puts a strain on the staff.

So I'm not saying things are perfect here. They do have capacity to create new ICU unit beds, that they have the capacity to do. And, again, I talked to the mayor of the county today and the hospital, it is certainly going to be dicey. It's going to be tough. They're at their limits in many ways.

But they feel confident that even as they model out this thing's peak here in the next two to three weeks, but they have the resources to handle it as long as they have Remdesivir in sufficient quantities, and as long as we get those PPEs delivered, obviously.

MACCALLUM: I mean, I think probably everybody's seen the protest or heckling of Governor DeSantis. Early on he got so much attention for doing a good job. And now the numbers are going against him. What do you think happened? I mean, how did things get so bad in Florida?

RUBIO: Well, the heckler is a - is the President of the socialist club or whatever they call it down here. He's not a organic citizen that just walked in that was upset. This guy is a professional political operative who is working for Bernie Sanders not long ago so I'm not sure he's representative of anything other than socialism.

As far as what went wrong, if you look around the world any country -- any time or any community or any country in the world as their economy and people begin to go and interact with one another, you saw surging cases in Israel, in Japan and parts of Europe once again and it's going to be -- other places are going to face this as well because there's only so much locking down you can do before people are going to interact.

MACCALLUM: Yes.

MARCO: A substantial portion of our cases are being driven by private gatherings within extended families and the like and government can't ban those. People need to wear their mask, people need to be more conscious of it, I believe they now are.

But remember, the hospitalizations we are seeing today are the infections that happened two or three weeks ago, and so hopefully if we can begin to correct that behavior now, we'll see improving numbers as we move forward into the next month.

MACCALLUM: So, the CDC is now -- the White House and the task force are saying that they want all the data sent directly to them, not to the CDC and of course that's raising some eyebrows about what, you know, how the White House will handle those numbers, why wouldn't those numbers go straight to the CDC, does not disturb you?

MARCO: Well, I'd like to know the reason why before I can tell you I'm disturbed by it. If the result of it is they want the numbers sent to them so they can quickly move Remdesivir to the right places, so they can quickly move resources to the right places --

MACCALLUM: Yes.

MARCO: -- then that's good news. If it's for some other reason, then obviously, I will be disturbed by it. But ultimately, we had an issue here where we had a shortness of Remdesivir in some of our hospitals and we have an oversupply in other hospitals both in the state and throughout the country. So, we are going to find, so if that's designed to better improve that system then maybe it makes sense.

MACCALLUM: Yes.

MARCO: But I don't know the rationale behind it.

MACCALLUM: Yes. I've got to go but I've got to ask you very quickly, Jacksonville Republican National Convention, will you attend and do you think it's wise to, you know, do an in-person convention?

MARCO: Yes, I plan to attend. Obviously, we'll wait and see what circumstances look like at that point but they're going to test everybody going in and out of the hall every single day, they are going to move events outdoors.

So, you know, if you're going to have an event where everyone is going to be tested before they go in, I think that's a pretty significant mitigation move and if we can do that in schools, we'd be able to open them up right away.

MACCALLUM: Yes.

MARCO: But that's obviously not something we are capable of doing everywhere all the time right now.

MACCALLUM: Senator Rubio, always good to talk to you, sir. Thank you very much. Good to see you tonight.

MARCO: Thank you.

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