Marco Rubio Accuses the Media of ‘Concerted Effort’ to ‘Breathlessly Distort and Lie’ About Trump — In Testy Exchange With CBS’ Brennan

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) claimed the news media is deliberately distorting and lying about comments made by Donald Trump during a fiery debate with CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

Brennan opened the discussion on Face The Nation by asking for Rubio about his thoughts on Trump’s remarks regarding Liz Cheney. Previously, Trump blasted Cheney as a “warhawk” and suggested her foreign policy would be different there were guns “shooting at her.”

Rubio dismissed Brennan’s concerns about Trump’s comments, insisting that the former president was making a reasonable argument against American intervention in foreign wars.

BRENNAN: Well, in terms of safety and security, that sound bite a moment ago from Donald Trump talking about training guns on the face of Liz Cheney, the Trump campaign–

RUBIO: That’s not what he said.

BRENNAN: –says that was about foreign policy. Well, we just played it for our viewers and listeners who heard it. Isn’t it possible to make the case without using rhetoric like that?

RUBIO: But Donald Trump doesn’t talk like someone who’s been in Washington for 30 years. He doesn’t say it–

BRENNAN: Training guns on her face?

RUBIO: –the way I would have said it. No, but that’s not what he said. Margaret, you guys know that. Come on, everybody knows exactly what he was saying. What he was saying is–

BRENNAN: We played the soundbite.

RUBIO: –you’re so much in favor of war. Yeah you- no, you played a piece of the sound bite because in another piece of it, he said he would give her a gun to go stand in conflict as well. You don’t normally give a gun to someone that is going to be facing a firing squad, which is what much of the media made it sound like. The point he was making is not a new point. It is a point that has been made by people in both parties for decades, and that is, you’re all for war, and it’s easy to be for war when you’re in some fancy building and you’re safe and sound in Washington, DC. Let’s see how much you are for war when you yourself get deployed into combat. That’s the point that he was making. That he uses language that maybe is not what we typically hear from someone that works at a think tank, fine. But I think it’s truly, not just unfair, it’s egregious to see that reported the way that it was, along with other things that are out there. I’ve never seen such a concerted effort- and look, I’ve always believed there’s bias, because no one’s unbiased, but I’ve never seen such a concerted effort like what I’ve seen, especially in the last two weeks, among multiple media outlets in this country to, in some cases, breathlessly distort and lie about what’s being said, and to create and manufacture these gotcha moments against Donald Trump. I’ve never seen it before.

Brennan did not engage on that point — instead shifting gears to question the senator about election intergrity.

Watch the clip above via CBS News.