On Thursday morning, the former Pennsylvania senator got one of his first chances to play the role of Rubio advocate during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. It, um, did not go well. Asked repeatedly to name Rubio’s top accomplishment in the Senate, Santorum came up empty time and time again. “If you look at being in the minority in the United States Senate in a year when nothing got—four years where nothing got done, I guess it’s hard to say there are accomplishments,” Santorum said. “I mean, tell me what happened during that four years that was an accomplishment for anybody? It was complete gridlock.”
Things only got worse from there. When Joe Scarborough reminded Santorum that the GOP has controlled the Senate for more than a year now, Rubio’s latest endorser responded by noting that Rubio has been awfully busy during that time campaigning for president—something you’d expect to hear from one of Rubio’ rivals, not one of his newfound allies. (“Joe, look, the Republicans have been in the majority for one year and one month, of which, as you know, he was running for president primarily,” Santorum said.) At another point co-host Mika Brzezinski felt compelled to jump in and offer her guest a lifeline in the form of a fill-in-the-blank question. “Jeb Bush ran Florida. Donald Trump built a company,” she said. “Marco Rubio… — finish the sentence.” (Santorum went with “the speaker of the Florida House, which is not something that’s a minor deal.”)