U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Margaret Brennan, of the CBS program Face the Nation program on Sunday, that the Houthis have attacked U.S. naval vessels 174 times and commercial ships 145 times in the past 18 months.
“We basically have a band of pirates with guided precision anti-ship weaponry, and exacting a toll system in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world,” Rubio said. “That’s just not sustainable. We are not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot.”
The secretary of state added that the United States aims to take away the Houthi ability to control a very important shipping lane.
“We’re doing the entire world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping. That’s the mission here, and it will continue until that’s carried out,” he said. “That never happened before. The Biden administration didn’t do that. All the Biden administration would do is they would respond to an attack. These guys would launch one rocket. We’d hit the rocket launcher. That’s it.”
Brennan also asked Rubio about the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to deport a recent Columbia University graduate, which the administration says supported Hamas.
“Can you substantiate any form of material support for terrorism, specifically to Hamas from this Columbia student, or was it simply that he was espousing a controversial political point of view?” she asked.
“Well, not just the student—we’re going to do more. In fact, every day now we’re approving visa revocations, and, if that visa led to a green card, the green card process as well,” the secretary said.
“But is there any evidence of a link to terrorism, or is it just his point of view?” she asked.
“You should watch the news,” Rubio said. “These guys take over entire buildings. They vandalize colleges. They shut down colleges.”
“This specific individual was the spokesperson, was the negotiator—negotiating on behalf of people that took over a campus, that vandalized buildings. Negotiating over what? That’s a crime in and of itself that they’re involved in being the negotiator or the spokesperson,” he said.
“We don’t need these people in our country. We never should have allowed them in in in the first place,” he said.