Marco Rubio Says He Would Be President Right Now If He Had Watched 'Game of Thrones' Two Years Earlier

NewsWeek- Senator Marco Rubio joked Tuesday that if he’d watched HBO series Game of Thrones before running for president, it would be him, not Donald Trump, in the White House now. Rubio was at one point considered the favorite to clinch the Republican nomination in 2016, but was beaten by outsider Trump in what became a highly personal contest. Speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute’s trade symposium at the Canadian Embassy, Rubio said he’s recently begun watching Game of Thrones. But, he jokingly lamented, he could have benefited hugely from joining much of the rest of the world in tuning in earlier to the hugely popular show, in which scheming rivals compete to sit on the Iron Throne. “If I’d have watched two years ago, I would’ve been president,” Rubio said, according to Haley Byrd of the Independent Journal Review. “It’s got a lot of good strategies.” Rubio may identify with one character on the show in particular: Littlefinger.

Now obviously he was joking, and I don’t think Marco Rubio is right about this, but at the same time he might be right about this. Because anybody who watches Game of Thrones thinks they could run an empire once they get done watching. There’s so much political maneuvering in the show that it starts to make your brain work that way. You come out the other side thinking like Cersei Lannister. There’s no avoiding it. And who knows, maybe if Marco Rubio had been more like Cersei he would be POTUS. We’ll never know. It’s the same with any show that resonates though. I remember when I got done binge-watching The Sopranos I actually thought I could run a criminal empire. I was convinced. I still kinda am. I can order hits and double cross with the best of them, I thought. Same thing I felt when I got done watching The Wire. I was convinced I could be a homicide detective like Jimmy McNulty. That type of feeling says less about the viewer and more about the creators. You gotta create a good fucking piece of entertainment to convince people they for sure couldn’t do. This should be the new tagline for Game of Thrones actually. “This show is so good that it convinced Marco Rubio that he could be president”