Rubio: ‘It’s not that we lost, it’s that Donald Trump won’

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he remains in disbelief over Donald Trump’s upending of the GOP’s presidential primary.

“A lot of times it feels almost like the guy who built this really strong building,” he said in an interview with The Guardian published Tuesday.

{mosads}“And it was in the right place, and it was the way these buildings have always been built, but he got hit by a category five hurricane,” Rubio added. “It was not just that we lost, it’s that Donald Trump won. … It was a very unusual political year.”

Rubio suspended his White House run in March, after finishing second to Trump in his home state’s primary.

Trump has since outlasted all other GOP presidential candidates, making him the party’s presumptive nominee.

Rubio said in Tuesday’s interview he also regrets battling New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a presidential debate in early February.

Christie mocked Rubio’s overly scripted rhetoric during the contest in Goffstown, N.H., right before the Granite State’s critical GOP presidential primary.

“Did we make mistakes, or are there things we’d do differently?” Rubio asked of his campaign. “Yeah.

“I think if we had made a strategic decision in New Hampshire different from the one I made — which was not to engage with Chris Christie, but to try to just ignore it and just stay on message — that would have been a nothing,” he added.

“I don’t think it impacted voters, but I do think it impacted media coverage in the days leading up to the New Hampshire vote, which I think ultimately hurt us. I think we would have finished very strongly in New Hampshire had it not been for that, and it might have led to a different outcome in South Carolina and maybe changed the trajectory of the race.”

Christie suspended his own White House run in February. He has since endorsed Trump and become a loyal surrogate for the billionaire.