MIAMI–Marco Rubio, fresh off two last-place finishes and two third-place finishes in Tuesday’s voting, announced to an excited crowd here today that “Everything is going exactly according to our plan,” and predicted a strong surge in performance in the coming weeks.

“Last night, America took another big step towards saying yes to President Rubio,” the candidate said, as the Hilton housekeeping staff vacuumed around him. “What are the two elections that everyone says really matter in the first half of the primary? Minnesota and Puerto Rico. Did we win Minnesota and Puerto Rico? Yes, we did.”

Rubio later assured major donors that his surprising collapse in support over the past two weeks, as he has fallen from a strong second-place finisher in most elections to a distant third or fourth, “is all part of the plan.”

“It’s hard to explain exactly what the plan is,” he explained on a conference call. “But we’ve got ’em exactly where we want ’em.”

“We got two third-place finishes last night,” added Rubio later in the call. “You know what they call someone who gets third place in the Olympics? A medallist, that’s what.”

Later in the day, the Rubio campaign unveiled a powerful new slogan, “The best alternative to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, except for maybe John Kasich.”



“What a lot of people don’t yet understand is that I really, really want to be president,” said Rubio.