Rubio blames the media

Marco Rubio accepted the blame for his disappointing fifth-place finish in New Hampshire but also pointed to another culprit: the media.

“What happened is obviously Saturday night the debate went the way it went, and then just the media coverage over the last 72 hours was very negative about it and so forth,” Rubio said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends.” “So the last thing voters heard going into the booth yesterday was, you know, something bad happened Saturday night. And so it made it very difficult for us to get any other message across.”


Rubio was excoriated following Saturday’s debate after Chris Christie called the Florida senator out for his “memorized 25-second speech” — a line Rubio used several times in the debate about how President Barack Obama "knows exactly what he’s doing" and vowed to keep using on the trail despite the harsh criticism.

With 89 percent of precincts reporting as of 8 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, Rubio is fifth in New Hampshire with 11 percent support. Less than 3,000 votes separate Rubio from third-place Ted Cruz and fourth-place Jeb Bush.

“If you look at the margins between third place and fifth place, I mean, you’re just talking about a couple thousand votes out of almost 300,000 and so that made a difference,” Rubio said. “To the extent that we finished shorter than we wanted to, I think it had to do with … Saturday night and the last three days and the coverage. So that’s on me and that ain’t ever gonna happen again. And we’re looking forward to South Carolina.”

Rubio praised his team’s effort and vowed to win the Republican nomination. “We’re gonna win this campaign and we’re gonna win this primary,” he said. “It’s important for the country and I’m fired up about that.”

Before last night's results, Rubio told NBC News of his debate performance: "We did excellent."

