Marco Rubio said Tuesday that CNN made up a report that some Rubio advisers think he should drop out of the presidential race before the Florida primary.
In the same interview with Fox News radio Kilmeade and Friends:
* Rubio said no one currently has a path to the majority of the delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination
* Rubio said a vote in Florida for Kasich or Cruz is a vote for Trump
* Rubio said that because Trump is the frontrunner there's not pressure for him or others to drop out and rally around the frontrunner (and "it's not gonna happen for Ted either")
"It is just false," Rubio said on the radio program on Tuesday. "They just made it up. There's no other way to describe it other than the fact that they made it up. And in fact they have now gone back and said they have one source, not in the campaign, but someone who knows someone who knows someone. I mean, it is just crazy the things people make up these days. It's not new that you you see some other campaigns pushing that kind of stuff but it is just patently false."
"Look, I think it has been proven as false, not a single person has come out and said, 'No, this is true, this is me who they were talking about,'" said Rubio noting he was in the race to win it. "I mean it is just false. Fortunately, we have press sources that allow us to get our word out."
The senator said the states coming up would be much better for him and blasted the Cruz campaign for spreading the CNN story about alleged drop out conversations in his campaign.
"It ain't true, it is a lie, and unfortunately looks like Ted Cruz's campaign is putting out emails in places like Hawaii, telling people about it, and you saw that with Ben Carson earlier. It's just not true. We have a 151 delegates, my path at end of the day is not essentially any different from his or anybody else's. Right now no one has has a clear path to the 1,237 delegates. It's very unique campaign, we're not gonna run out of money and we're not gonna run out of supporters."
And, added Rubio, Democrats would chew Donald Trump up and spit him out if he was the Republican nominee.
"You are starting to see all the problems in his background. The Democrats are going to shred him. They are going to eat him alive. If you nominate Donald Trump, not only will you divide the Republican Party we are going to lose badly to Hillary Clinton."
In Florida, Rubio said since the state is a winner-take-all contest, a vote not for him was a vote for Trump.
"If you vote for Ted Cruz in Florida or you vote for John Kasich, you're voting for Donald Trump," he said.
"Our campaign is built on the long haul and if you look at the states that are coming up now this is where we start to get stronger and obviously with Florida coming up on the 15. It's all about Florida," he added.
"Here's the bottom line, if the frontrunner were anyone not named Donald Trump right now there would be extraordinary pressure on everybody else to say, 'Hey, let's get out and rally around the frontrunner so we can start the general election.' It's not gonna happen here," he said. "It's not gonna happen for Ted either. This gonna take longer than any of them wanted to but that's the campaign we're in. If we nominate the right person it will make us a stronger party."
No one is on pace to get the delegates before convention, he argued.
"If Donald Trump wins Florida then it starts looking like maybe you can't stop him. That's win it's so important for everyone in Florida to vote for me, because I'm the only one who has a shot to stop him or beat him in Florida."