“We should not have cults of personality here,” Rubio said. “If you look at any political movement in the world where the leader says, ‘Deposit your trust in me, for I am going to lead you to salvation,’ that’s only worked, according to my faith, one time. And it wasn’t a political movement.” It wasn’t Trump University, either.

“Any time a leader builds an entire movement around himself, it almost always leads to disaster,” Rubio continued. Compared with the previous night’s debate, in which Rubio was relatively gentle toward Trump, he was now absolutely killing him. “We shouldn’t have cults of personality here, which in some ways is what the Trump phenomenon has become,” he said. If Trump is the Republican nominee, Rubio envisions calamity. “I think he’ll divide the Republican Party. I think he’ll lose the election. And I think there’ll be a lot of regret going around for years to come.”

In all of our conversations, I’d never heard Rubio this disgusted. Nor had I heard him this harsh on Trump, whom he reiterated was a “con man” — someone who is “selling this character of Donald Trump who is in no way the reality of Donald Trump,” and had been his entire life.

And yet: Despite everything, Rubio continues to say he would still support Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee. That’s how he answered a question on that subject at a debate on March 3. (Cruz and Kasich said the same.) I was baffled by this and remained so. For as passionate and principled as Rubio fashioned himself, the answer showed he was still bound by the depressing orthodoxy of politics and partisanship — the very things that Trump has flouted to such success.