Rubio and Trump Battle over His Record of Hiring Illegal Immigrants

‘You haven’t hired one person, you liar’

BLITZER: "Mr. Trump?" 
TRUMP: "First of all, self-deportation is people are going to leave as soon as they see others going out. If you look at Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, they started moving people out and the rest of them left. Self-deportation, as I really define it, and that's the way I define it, is you're going to get some to go, and the rest are going to go out. As far as the people I've hired in various parts of Florida during the absolute prime season, like palm beach and other locations, you could not get help. It's the up season. People didn't want to have part-time jobs. They were part-time jobs, very seasonal, 90-day jobs, 120-day jobs, and you couldn't get. Everybody agrees with me on that. They were part-time jobs. You needed them, or we just might as well close the doors, because you couldn't get help in those hot, hot sections of Florida." 
RUBIO: "That -- my point that I made was you had criticized Mitt Romney for self-deportation. You said that his strategy of self-deportation is why he lost the election. And I think people in Florida would be surprised, because, in fact, the article that was today, they interviewed a number of people, that would have been willing to do those jobs, if you would have been willing to hire them to do it." 
TRUMP: "I criticize Mitt Romney for losing the election. He should have won that election. He had a failed president, he ran a terrible campaign, he was a terrible candidate. That's what I criticize Mitt Romney --" 
RUBIO: "He --" 
TRUMP: "Excuse me. He ran one terrible campaign. That's an election that should have been won." 
RUBIO: "Well, in fact, I agree he should have won and I wished he would have, was, in fact, you did criticize him for using the term "Self-deportation." That's on the record and people can look it up right now online. But I want to reiterate, I think it's really important, this point. I think it's fine, it's an important point you raise and we discuss on immigration. This is a big issue for Texas and a huge issue for the country. But I also think that if you're going to claim that you're the only one that lifted this into the campaign, that you acknowledge that, for example, you're only person on this stage that's ever been find for hiring people to work on your projects illegally. You hired some --" 
TRUMP: "No, no, I'm the only one at this stage that's hired people. You haven't hired anybody." 
RUBIO: "In fact, some of the people --" 
TRUMP: "And by the way -- I've hired --" 
RUBIO: "And by the way --" 
TRUMP: "I've hired tens of thousands of people over my job. You've hired nobody. You've had nothing but problems with your credit cards, et cetera." 
RUBIO: "Let me -- don't me --" 
BLITZER: "Senator, hold on." 
TRUMP: "You haven't hired one person, you liar." 
RUBIO: "He hired workers from Poland." 
TRUMP: "That's wrong. Totally wrong." 
RUBIO: "People can look it up. I'm sure people are googling right now. Polish workers. Fined $1 million for hiring Polish workers on one of his projects. He did it. That happened." 
TRUMP: "I've hired tens of thousands of people over my lifetime. Tens of thousands." 
RUBIO: "Many from other countries instead of hiring Americans." 
TRUMP: "Just be quiet. Let me talk. I've hired tens of thousands of people. He brings up something from 30 years ago, it worked out very well. Everybody was --" 
RUBIO: "Yeah, you paid $1 million --" 
TRUMP: "By the way, the laws were totally different. That was a whole different world." 
RUBIO: "Thank you." 
TRUMP: "But I've hired people."

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