Marco Rubio says Catholics are moving to Donald Trump as backlash against Democratic secularism

Marco Rubio. Image via AP.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is breaking down a demographic movement that surprised some observers of this year’s Presidential Election, but not him.

Catholic voters were a pivotal demographic in support of President-elect Donald Trump. Per Washington Post exit polls, 56% of Catholics backed Trump, giving him a 15-point win over Kamala Harris with the group that tripled his 2020 margin with the same demographic against Joe Biden.

“I’m speculating now, but I can speak from personal experience as a Catholic and American and someone who voted and supported Donald Trump. Our faith instills in us, hopefully, a set of values that are ancient and tested and proven and have been true for successful societies, for thousands of years. And we are now living in an era where really important people, really powerful people, are telling us that those values are not just wrong, they’re hateful,” Rubio said.

He referred to transgender athletes in youth sports as examples of Catholic objections.

“We’re being told that if you speak out against these things, you’re some sort of an evil, retrograde, Neanderthal, backward-thinking person. I think there’s a real resistance to that,” Rubio continued.

“We have very powerful people in charge of powerful institutions who openly not just undermine, but mock the values that our faith tries to instill in us. And then of course, I also think people have not ignored these selective prosecutions of peaceful protesters outside of abortion clinics who were treated worse than the rioters who burned down major cities in this country in the Summer of 2020.”

The Senator, in making these comments on “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” went on to suggest that the Harris campaign pursued a secularist vote while ignoring Catholic qualms.

“Their campaign was a campaign that was focused on small bubbles in Washington, in New York, in LA, in the entertainment industry, in the activist class,” Rubio said.

“They think their activists on transgender issues, their activists on climate, their activists on immigration, that all of these activists on what they call ‘social justice,’ they think that all these activists are somehow reflective of the broader country. They are not.”

The Senator charged that Democrats were leveraging fringe elements in their coalition at the expense of traditional voters.

“These are people who used to be basically the crazy professors in the faculty club at a university. And now they’re sort of in the mainstream because of the power they have over major institutions, but they are not even close to the majority and (to) huge swaths of our country,” Rubio added.

“In many cases, they’re deeply offensive, and they come across as arrogant, they come across as preachy, they come across as condescending, as they think they’re better than you because of their progressive values versus your backward thinking.”