Rubio blames Trump for starting it after CNN host complains campaign turned ‘vulgar’ with dick jokes
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio with CNN's Dana Bash -- YouTube screenshot

Before a hooting and hollering CPAC crowd, fading GOP presidential contender Marco Rubio defended a Republican presidential campaign that was derailed this past week by a series of dick jokes and blamed rival Donald Trump for starting it.


In an interview posted to YouTube by the Rubio campaign, CNN's Dana Bash expressed her discomfort with the tenor of the campaign by speaking as the mother of a 4 year old.

"I want to put my mom hat on for a second. Because you're the proud father of four and I'm the mother of a 4-year-old son, and I'm having trouble letting him watch the news because things have gotten so vulgar," she told Rubio as the crowd began booing.

"It's so over the top that I don't want him to think that it's okay to act like that," she continued. "How do you feel as a father and a presidential candidate about how low things have gone?"

Rubio neatly sidestepped the current situation between GOP candidates by making a veiled reference to former President Bill Clinton, saying, "I don't want to have a president that we have to be constantly explaining to our kids, 'look, I know that's what the president did, but you shouldn't do that.'"

"We actually had a president like that no long ago," he added before smirking.

Saying she "didn't want to touch that," Bash pressed Rubio saying, "I can't explain to my kid about hands and things like that."

Rubio turned it back on Trump, although it was Rubio who started the penis controversy after making comments about Trump's small stubby fingers, by stating, "Have you seen his hands? You know what they say about men with small hands."

Speaking with Bash, Rubio complained, "Donald Trump, he might have grown up the way he did with a lot of money and going to boarding schools. I can tell you this, where I grew up, when someone keeps punching people in the face, eventually someone is going to have to stand up and punch them back."

Watch the video below, conversation about Tvulgarity starts at 6-minute mark: