SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Marco Rubio landed in South Carolina on Wednesday aiming to engineer a reboot for his once high-flying campaign, but so far his camp is mostly blaming the media for exaggerating his glitchy performances.

Eager to dispel the charge that he’s unable or afraid to speak off the cuff, Rubio answered questions for 45 minutes on his campaign plane, a rare occurrence for the Florida senator and one designed to establish a better relationship with an increasingly critical press corps.


“Guys, I’ve been attacked before plenty of times in my life,” Rubio said, explaining why he didn’t counter New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s onslaught during Saturday night’s debate. “I literally just wanted to avoid a fight among Republicans.”

But even as Rubio takes responsibility for an awkward moment at Saturday’s debate that fed the critique of him as an over-rehearsed amateur, his surrogates dismissed Rubio’s troubles as simply some media creation.

“I think the media made it what it was,” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who has endorsed Rubio, told POLITICO.

“I think it was overblown by the media,” Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner said.

Though he did it cheerfully and with a smile, Rubio also complained that the reporters who follow him are too quick to pounce on his repetition of canned lines in stump speeches. “You guys have heard it 50 times ... but the voter — that may be the first time they’ve ever seen me,” he said. “Sometimes you do have to repeat things, because these [voters] aren’t sitting in front of C-SPAN all day watching ‘Road to the White House.’”

As the comment suggested, the freewheeling Rubio who appeared for reporters on his campaign plane was gone once he disembarked and walked in front of voters in South Carolina. Rubio stuck to his standard script at two events. (He skipped a third event to return to Washington for a Senate vote on North Korea sanctions and, he said, to catch up on classified briefings.)

Even as he addressed questions about his speaking style, Rubio sought to focus on national security, arguing that his expertise gives him an upper hand in a state that welcomes hawks.

“I feel real good about South Carolina,” Rubio said. “I like the issue set. It’s a big national security state.”

“We’ll have a debate on Saturday,” he added. “Who on that stage has more experience, or has shown better judgment or better understanding of the foreign policy or national security issues than I have on that stage?” He called Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s national security voting record “inconsistent” and said Jeb Bush has no experience at all in that realm.

As for Trump, “I don’t think you can keep saying, ‘Trust me, I’ve got a plan for it,’” Rubio said.

Rubio argues that his positions on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees give him special expertise on those issues, and he has demonstrated more fluency in global affairs than his rivals.

But Rubio’s rivals counter that he offers little more than flash-card memorization of facts and argue he’s never made the kind of executive decisions that would give him bragging rights in those areas.

Introducing Rubio at his first stop in Spartanburg was South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi and suggested that Rubio’s debate answers on foreign policy were more important than his tussle with Christie. “I am proud of the answer that you gave on Sunni coalitions on Saturday night,” Gowdy said. “I am proud of the answer that you gave on North Korea.”

But Gowdy couldn’t avoid noting the elephant in the room: Rubio's poor showing in the New Hampshires primary.

“We are a state of fresh starts and new beginnings,” Gowdy told Rubio onstage. “I am proud of you, I am proud of the campaign that you have run.”

“I was disappointed in the way it went” in New Hampshire, Rubio told the crowd of several hundred a few minutes later, adding that “this election for me is not about the nightly news.”

Speaking to reporters, Rubio would not say where he needs to place in South Carolina or whether he needs to finish ahead of Jeb Bush.

Asked to name Rubio’s biggest challenge, Scott replied: “Rubio. All we’ve got to do is get back to where he was and let himself shine. He is the best candidate in our field. There is no question about it. He’s just got to be himself.”

It was unclear whether the charge that Rubio is robotic would dog him here (although two young men in cardboard “Marco Roboto” costumes posed for photos outside his first event).

But the question was on the minds of at least one voter. “Did he ever change his speech?” one man, who did not give his name, asked a reporter on his way out of Rubio’s event in Columbia.

Rachael Bade and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

