Hostin’s remarks came during a Friday panel discussion about Rubio’s prospects in a potential 2028 presidential race, as reported by Mediaite. Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin framed Rubio as the clear front-runner, declaring, “The odds-on favorite for the Republican nominee for 2028 as of today are absolutely Marco Rubio.”
That confident prediction immediately drew Hostin’s ire, who argued that conservatives would be making a grave political miscalculation by rallying behind Rubio. “Well then, the Republicans are going to lose because I do not think that Marco Rubio can remove the stench of the Trump administration from his very being!” she exclaimed, drawing applause from the studio audience.
Hostin then launched into a sweeping indictment of Rubio’s record and heritage, portraying him as morally compromised for serving in a Republican administration she views as hostile to minorities. “He is the son of immigrants from Cuba that came here in 1956. How dare he stand by complicitly and allow Latinos to be rounded up, allow American citizens to be shot in the face and shot in the chest and shot in the back,” she said, before accusing him of passivity on voting rights.
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“How dare he allow the voting — stand by idly — while the Voting Rights Act is gutted, and disenfranchising African American voting,” Hostin continued, invoking the historical suffering of Black Americans. “Something that African Americans, who built this joint for free, who built this country for free, be disenfranchised of their vote.”
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She went on to denounce Trump-era travel and immigration policies, casting them as racially motivated and blaming Rubio for not opposing them. “And at the moment as the Secretary of State, immigrants from travel ban countries are currently in limbo. The Trump administration has expanded travel restrictions to include 39 countries facing full or partial bans. And a lot, Black and Brown countries,” Hostin argued, before turning to Haiti.
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“And what about Haiti? You think a Haitian should — is allowed to be here with their temporary status just thrown away and going back to a country that is in complete political turmoil when his very parents left political turmoil and found asylum here? Disgusting!” she declared, equating Rubio’s family story with today’s migrants in an effort to shame his support for stricter enforcement.
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At that point, co-host Ana Navarro, herself a critic of the left’s rhetoric on immigration, stepped in to correct the historical record on Rubio’s family background. “Can I tell you something? They didn’t leave political turmoil. They left, as you mentioned, in 1956. So, they left before the Cuban Revolution. They left because they were poor. They left like so many people leave Mexico, leave some other countries, because they were looking for better — for economic opportunities.”
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Hostin refused to retreat, insisting the clarification only strengthened her case against Rubio’s alignment with Trump’s policies. “Even worse! Even worse then on Marco Rubio,” she shot back, suggesting that economic migrants should be even more sympathetic to today’s border crossers.
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Navarro added another biographical detail to underscore the stakes of current immigration enforcement, noting that Rubio’s own family once faced removal. “And his grandfather at one point had a deportation order. His grandfather, whom he adored, had a deportation order against him. Would have been deported under Trump,” Navarro said, implying that the very system conservatives defend might once have expelled the man who helped shape Rubio’s life.
