The list of supporters of former President Trump who are once harsh critiques of his is a long one. Case in point, the Republican Senator who was tapped to help his former rival and tormenter prepare for the upcoming CNN presidential debate. Here's Randy K.

You have a little Marco Rubio.

During the 2016 campaign, one of Donald Trump's favorite targets, Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

This little guy has lied so much about my record.

There we go.

The person- He has lied so much about my record. Now, that same Marco Rubio is helping Trump prepare for the upcoming CNN debate against President Joe Biden.

He has really large ears, the biggest ears I've ever seen.

For a while, Rubio put up with Trump's attacks in 2016, then decided to go on the attack, marking the size of Trump's hands.

He's like 6'2, which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who's 5'2. You know what they say about men with small hands? You can't trust them.

Trump pushed back during this Fox News Republican debate.

He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I've never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands. If they're small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee.

Rubio wasn't just Trump's punching bag. At this Republican debate in New Hampshire in 2016, Chris Christie painted Rubio as a robot, programmed with lines from his own debate prep about what he considered Obama's liberal agenda.

Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing.

That's what Washington DC does. The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information, and then the memorized 25 seconds speech. That is exactly what his advisors gave him.

Even after that, Rubio repeated the so-called Canned Line again.

Here's the bottom line. This notion that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing is just not true. There it is. He knows exactly what he's doing.

There it is. The memorized 25 seconds speech.

That's the reason why this campaign is so important, because I think this notion... I think this is an important point.

See, Marco, the thing is this. When you're President of the United States, when you're a governor of a state, the memorized 30 seconds speech where you talk about how a great America is at the end of it doesn't solve one problem for one person.

Three days after that debate was the New Hampshire primary on February ninth, in 2016, Rubio finished in fifth place, almost 25 points behind Trump. At the time, Rubio cited his own debate performance.

Our disappointment tonight is not on you. It's on me. It's on me. I did not do well on Saturday night. So listen to this. That will never happen again.

Yet last year, when Christie jumped into the 2024 presidential race, Rubio was quick to dispel the notion that Christie Christie played a role in his failed 2016 campaign. Any political reporter commentator claiming Christie ended my campaign in 2016 is lazy or dumb. New Hampshire debate sucked because instead of hitting back when attacked like I wanted to, I listened to advice about pivoting and not punching down on a Chris Christie who was at 7% and about to drop out. But it didn't end my campaign.

Randy joins us now. It's interesting There have been some talk about, obviously, Rubio is a vice presidential candidate. What's the latest you're hearing that?

All the reporting really indicates, Anderson, that Rubio is very much a contender, but it's complicated. It's not just complicated because of their rocky history. It's complicated because of this provision in the Constitution. Long story short, if Trump does pick Rubio as his running mate, there is a provision in the Constitution that says Electoral College votes from their home state of Florida can't go to both of them. In other words, there's a penalty and, of course, a massive disincentive for someone to pick a running mate state from the same state. We saw this in 2000 with George Bush and Dick Cheney. They were both from Texas. Cheney moved to Wyoming, so they didn't lose any Electoral College votes. So if Trump were to pick Marco Rubio as his running mate, one of them would have to move away from the state of Florida.

Randy K, thanks very much. I appreciate it. Joining us now is Republican debate coach and strategist Brett O'Donnell. He's a former chief strategist to Michelle Bachman's presidential campaign. He's worked for six Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney. Does it make any sense to you that Rubio is reportedly Has anybody been involved, at least, allegedly, on a policy level, in inform President Trump's debate prep? Just watching him being decimated by Chris Christie there is painful.

Well, everybody has a bad debate every now and then. But Marco Rubio was pretty good in the 2016 debates. More importantly than that, he's been involved in very significant, detailed policy issues as a United States Senator. My guess is he's helping President Trump get up to speed on some of the policies that he might get asked about in the debate and sharpen maybe some of the attack lines that he can use against Joe Biden in the debate as well.

You've watched the former President, obviously, debate. He's not somebody who, in debate prep from everything, all the reporting, gets deep in the weeds on policy issues. It seems like he is more about moments and lines of attack.

He's being prevented Well, that's what debates are about. Debates are about being able to push a message and have moments where you exercise competitive advantage over your opponents. But you also have to be up on the major policy issues that Congress has been debating because Joe Biden's inevitably going to ask about some of those, and he'll have to give an answer as to what his position is on some of them. So, yeah, I think the President is largely about moments, but Marco Rubio is probably helping with both the moments and the policy. I think we're making a lot about this instead. It's really about the person who's going to be debating, and that's Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and what they bring to the debate.

What do you expect from this debate in terms of their styles, their strategies?

Well, you have two people who don't like each other very much. And so the question becomes, can they keep the debate centered on issues rather than themselves? I think that's true for both of them. If Donald Trump debates like he did in the second debate, I think that will favor former President Trump. If he debates like he did in the first debate, I think that plays into Joe Biden's hand. The challenge is for Donald Trump to make this a referendum on Joe Biden's policies. The challenge for Joe Biden is to make this a choice between him and President Trump.

If you were advising both campaigns, well, I mean, even by presidential campaign standards, there's obviously a lot of animosity between them. I want to play one more of that heat exchange from their first debate that you were just talking about in 2020.

The question is- You want to put a lot of new Supreme Court justice radical left. Will you shut up, man? Listen, who is on your list, Joe? This is so right.

This is I think we've ended this- This is so unpresidential. He's going to pack the court. We're not going to give a list.

Obviously, that was not good for the former president.

No. I think actually the CNN rules that you all have put in place actually help President Trump. You're going to cut microphones off for those whose turn it isn't to speak. I think that will actually help President Trump. But no, it's not. I think the obvious thing for President Trump is to get Joe Biden talking, to get him talking about his policies, and to make him account for the last four years of his record. That is the argument that President Trump has to make. Much of the American public doesn't find the policies of Joe Biden very appealing. They view them negatively. And so it's an opportunity for President Trump to have Joe Biden defend his record. That's the challenge for President Trump to stay out of his way and force Biden to defend the record of his last four years. The challenge for Biden is to actually get under President Trump's skin and to make him interrupt and remind folks of some of the qualities that they find less endearing.

I mean, expectations, obviously, for President Biden. A lot of people are going to be looking, wondering if Critics are right, that he's diminished in or he doesn't have the stamina to be President. How risky is it for the Trump campaign to effectively be lowering expectations for their opponent? People were at the State of the Union. President Biden had a combative performance with members of the audience, and that seemed to work in his favor.

Yeah, I think the state of the Union is different from debates. He's in the crucible of arguments at that point. I think that The expectations should be rather high for President Biden. After all, he is the President of the United States. He has a record of four years that he has to defend. That usually causes incumbents to stumble in their first debate. If you look back at the history of presidential debates, you look at Obama in 2012, did not perform well in that first debate. President Bush, who I worked with, did not perform well in the first debate in 2004. Ronald Reagan do very well in the first debate in 1984. So I think those expectations should be higher on President Biden. He is the sitting President, and I think that the campaign should not be lowering those expectations.