U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) gave high praise to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio Thursday for “standing up for our Constitution.”

Rubio faced off against some of his former colleagues in the Senate this week as he testified in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

“I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), during one of the heated exchanges with Rubio.

“Your regret for voting for me confirms that I’m doing a good job,” Rubio responded.

Tuberville defended President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State during an interview on Fox Business.

“Well, number one, he’s standing up for the American people,” Tuberville argued. “He’s standing up for our country, and he’s standing up for our Constitution. You never see that from the Democratic Party, who actually turned into the party of cartels and criminals. It’s absolutely amazing to me. We have a plan. There was no plan…for four years. People were running amok. There was no rudder on their ship. They had no clue where they were going. Now they’re trying to make up for it by coming after people that actually know what they’re doing and want to help this country.”

The senator also thanked Rubio for his comments about the need to tie foreign aid to America’s national interests.

“Well, I thought it was a great comment, because people look at us as somebody that in terms of the Democrats, of somebody that’s selfish,” he said. “They don’t do things for other people. We help more people than all the other countries combined. And he just said that, and I’m proud for Marco Rubio bringing that out, because very few people like to talk about it. The American taxpayers really help millions of people all over the world, and it needs to be advertised every day, but you would never know it if you asked a Democrat, because they think that the American people should be giving everything away and not keeping anything from themselves to make them stronger as a family.”

Tuberville concluded that Rubio is always fantastic at debating Democrats.

“He could debate all those people all day long, and they’d never get anything over on him,” he quipped. “He’s much smarter than they are. He believes, again, when you have a game plan, when you have an idea of what you want to do, an outline and address the future of your job, you can handle whatever they put out at you. But they were scrambling. They were trying to make him look bad. I’d put Marco Rubio in front of any of these people, and would he would win every time.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee