Crowley Political Report

Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio found themselves sitting next to each other on a flight to Miami last week. NPR asked Rubio what the two men discussed just hours before Rubio announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination for president.

From NPR's transcript of the interview:

A Florida political reporter noticed that you spent a plane ride sitting beside Jeb Bush, more than two hours, coming back from an NRA convention. Did you guys talk about the presidential campaign at all?

Not in great detail. Jeb and I are friends, we'll always be friends. And I have tremendous admiration for him as a person, what he did as governor, and personal affection. And that's not going to change.

I don't view, I'm not running against Jeb Bush and I'm not running against anybody in this field. I'm running because I strongly believe that I have something to offer this country that no one else in the field does at this moment in our history.

And I'm going to go out there and do the best job that I can and — but, I mean, that's not going to impact our relationship in any way that's going to change how we feel about one another and it was great to see him and spend quality time just talking about good times and everything going on ...

You didn't talk politics very much at all?

... and everything in between. Sure, I mean we had observations about — we joked with a lot of the passengers who saw us sitting next to each other and we took some pictures with people and we told them, we warned them how historic a picture like that may be one day.

And, um, but you know, we talked about the Masters, we talked about the Paleo diet, we talked about the Miami Dolphins. I mean it, we talked about, reminisced about old war stories from our time in the legislature, when I was in the legislature and he was governor. It was just a host of things.

Sooner or later if you go forward and he goes forward, there's going to be a moment where you're going to have to say, "Here's why it should be me and not him."

I don't know. I mean, I think this year's going to be quite different in that regard. We have a quality field of candidates who are going to be well financed and experienced, who are going to be running. And I think that'll change the nature of the race.

There'll certainly be moments when others will try to draw distinctions. But in my mind, I'm going to talk about who I am and what I want to do. And I'll let voters make the decision about who they think is best capable at this moment of leading our country.

Read the entire NPR transcript here.