Marco Rubio calls Donald Trump a cult of personality, still says he'll have his vote

(Image credit: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)

published 14 March 2016

Watching Marco Rubio squirm over the increasing likelihood of having to choose between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump induces a kind of depression that the 2016 campaign has lacked since Jeb Bush went on his merry way. Despite repeated claims that he would in fact vote for Trump if he became the GOP nominee, Rubio has slammed the GOP frontrunner as being a cult of personality — something that only worked out okay once:

"We should not have cults of personality here," Rubio said. "If you look at any political movement in the world where the leader says, 'Deposit your trust in me, for I am going to lead you to salvation,' that's only worked, according to my faith, one time. And it wasn't a political movement." It wasn't Trump University, either."Any time a leader builds an entire movement around himself, it almost always leads to disaster," Rubio continued. Compared with the previous night's debate, in which Rubio was relatively gentle toward Trump, he was now absolutely killing him. "We shouldn't have cults of personality here, which in some ways is what the Trump phenomenon has become," he said. If Trump is the Republican nominee, Rubio envisions calamity. "I think he'll divide the Republican Party. I think he'll lose the election. And I think there'll be a lot of regret going around for years to come." [The New York Times Magazine]

Having pronounced Trump as nothing less than an impending disaster, it's time for the rest of us to hunker down to spend the next eight months watching Rubio pick his poison.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.