Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) defended Donald Trump mocking Nikki Haley’s husband who is currently deployed overseas.
“Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. … What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone,” Trump said at his rally in Conway, South Carolina on Saturday.
Maj. Michael Haley is on his second active-duty deployment overseas in Africa with the South Carolina Army National Guard in support of the United States Africa Command.
In a CNN interview on Sunday, Rubio defended the former president mocking the absence of a deployed service member.
“I think they’re part of the increasing nastiness of this campaign and every campaign in American politics,” Rubio told host Jake Tapper when asked about what he thought about Trump’s comments.
“I mean, they’re calling him a grumpy old man. They’re attacking Donald Trump. I remember when Melania Trump was not visible for some period of time. You have people in the media and others snickering and speculating that she was no longer with Donald Trump,” he continued. “We find out later, of course, that she was caring for her ailing mother, who was in the last weeks and days of her life. So this sort of nastiness, you know, Trump gives us as good as he gets.”
