Secretary of State Marco Rubio beamed with pride Friday after his daughter Daniella introduced him before a major post-election speech at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention.
“Was that cool or what?” Rubio gushed after his daughter’s remarks. “I don’t know where she got this. There’s no stage fright. She’s not afraid to speak. I don’t really like public speaking that much, but she, on the other hand – that’s fantastic.”
Daniella, a third-year law student at the University of Virginia, is Rubio’s youngest daughter. He has four children with his wife Jeanette. When asked by a law student how Americans can instill the values of freedom in the next generation, Rubio quipped, “Well, my home was not a democracy,” adding that he was “not the dictator” but rather “the minister of defense.”
The speech, Rubio’s first since Republicans suffered significant losses in the midterm elections, struck an optimistic tone. He reminded the conservative audience of the Republican Party’s “devastating losses” in the 1982 midterm elections during Ronald Reagan's first term.
“Less than two years into Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, everything sort of seemed headed in the wrong direction,” Rubio said, referencing the 1980s. “It’s hard for us to remember that right now, but that’s what it was like.”
Rubio encouraged current Republicans to adopt a long-term perspective, stating, “We have much more to do over the next two, the next six, the next 20 years. Great things that last are built in decades, not election cycles.”
He concluded his remarks by asserting that while there will be more victories and defeats, triumphs and disappointments, the party must remain persuaded of the justice of its cause. “There are no great men or great causes in the pages of history that did not suffer the same,” he said. “But we are persuaded of the justice of our cause, and we too will triumph in the end.”