Transcript and Video: Breakfast With Sen. Marco Rubio

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.)  spoke to reporters gathered at a breakfast hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 29, the morning after the President Barack Obama’s fifth State of the Union address. The address pointed to some areas of common ground between Republicans and Democrats, he said, but the president’s emphasis on acting unilaterally through executive action is “deeply counterproductive.” He also spoke on the future of the Republican Party, immigration reform, income inequality and the role of the president, among other topics. Here is the lightly edited transcript: 

Jerry Seib (WSJ Washington Bureau Chief): Welcome, why don’t we get started. Thank you all for coming out. It was either a long night or a short night for most of us last night, I don’t know which it was. I started the morning in New York so I know it was a short night for me and for Senator Rubio, thank you for coming. You had not only a long night last night but jet lag from your trip to Asia. We’ll see if the coffee keeps him alive for the next hour.

Seib: So State of the Union last night obviously the place to start. The question I have as I listened to it and thought about this conversation this morning was whether you heard anything in that speech that you could say yeah, we can agree, we can do that, anything at all.