Caputo: ‘Marco’s Going to Have to Answer’ About His Ties to a Scandal-Plagued Fla. Pol

TODD: "Let me go to Marc. You just—"
CAPUTO: "I’ve gotta say, I’d rather just watch them on television."
IFILL: "A patented dynamic."
TODD: "The most fun Marc is that they’re also so civil about it. Which is a reminder that that is what at least Sunday mornings are about. But Marc, you had the Marco Rubio story this week that Hugh just brought up. And it does go to, the head-scratcher there was, it was sort of like a non-issue. But what took him so long?"
CAPUTO: "Well there’s a few things that took them so long. One, Rubio in 2010, a first batch of his credit cards got released and credit card statements through the Republican party of Florida got released on the behest of then Governor Charlie Crist who was running against him in the Senate. And they made the calculation in 2010, like, 'Look, these are private statements. And I’m just going to take the hit.'

"Years later, they had the luxury of knowing that when we runs for president, they’re going to have time to analyze his other statements. And then when they analyze those statements, they’re able to put them together and pull all the bank statements, they realized, 'Oh my God, there’s not much here. There’s only $65,000 in spending over two years at the head of Florida House campaign.'

"Which is not a lot of money. And so what they did is they made the calculation as, we’re going to hold off on this until the appropriate time, and we’re going to let the Donald Trumps of the world say, 'This is going to be a disaster.'
TODD: "It was a setup."
IFILL: "Oh, that’s what I was going to ask—"
TODD: "So you really believe this was—"
MADDOW: "It’s very smart."
TODD: "David Rivera, the guy who owns the House scandal—"
TODD: "And the former member of Congress down there who was basically chased out via scandal, is that now going to be less of a hit on him because of how this credit card thing went down?"
CAPUTO: "I wouldn’t presume to say what’s going to be a hit and what’s not. Certainly Marco’s going to have to answer questions about his relationship with David, because David’s been in a lot of trouble, but always been able to avoid indictment at the state and federal level."