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Marco Rubio still confident after NH primary loss: I'm 'going to be the nominee'

Marco Rubio tells TODAY his campaign is going to "get back to the fundamentals."
/ Source: TODAY

After publicly stating that his poor performance in the New Hampshire primary was "on me," Marco Rubio told TODAY his campaign is going to "get back to the fundamentals."

"To the extent that we finished shorter of what we wanted to...it's because of me," Rubio told Savannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer Wednesday.

As for who is going to be the Republican nominee, Rubio said that despite finishing well behind front-runner Donald Trump, he's still prepared to come out on top.

"We’re going to be the nominee," he said. "It’s just going to take a little longer but we’re going to get there."

Rubio found himself in a battle for fourth with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, coming in with 11 percent of the vote. Donald Trump claimed a double-digit victory in New Hampshire with 35 percent of the vote. Ohio Gov. John Kasich finished second with 16 percent of the vote.

The loss comes less than a week after Rubio's debate debacle, where the Florida senator repeated the line Obama "knows exactly what he's doing" four times, leading many on social media to devise the nickname "Rubio bot."

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Wednesday on TODAY, Rubio brushed aside criticism that his debate performance is indicative of a lack of depth: "We’ve had eight debates in this campaign so far. I’ve done great in all of it but a minute and a half, about 90 seconds of it."

"I got asked a host of question on complex things and I answered every single one of those questions with as much depth as anyone in the race," Rubio told TODAY.

Rubio also declared that despite winning in New Hampshire, Trump "is not going to be the Republican nominee."

"Ultimately, to be president, you can’t go around telling people what’s wrong," Rubio said. "You have to tell people how you’re going to fix it."