Speaking Friday before the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., Rubio also continued to distance himself from his role in pushing a bipartisan immigration plan through the Senate in 2014, saying he learned lessons and declining to push back on an assertion from Fox News personality Sean Hannity that Rubio had regrets about the legislation. Asked later what his top five priorities would be as president, Rubio didn’t mention immigration.
“What I’ve learned is you can’t even have a conversation about that until people believe and know—and not just believe, but is proven to them—that future illegal immigration will be controlled,” Rubio said. “That is the single biggest lesson of the last two years.”
Rubio, 43, opened his 20 minutes on stage by reminding the friendly crowd that his first address to the group was in 2010, when he was a “50-point” underdog against then-Governor Charlie Crist. Rubio has said he’ll decide whether to run for president in the spring, and early polls show he’d start from behind in that race, too.
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