Profiles In Courage: Marco Rubio Attacks Intern For Writing Accurate Piece About Him
Earlier this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) offered up a rebuke of the GOP tax cuts when he told the Economist that he wasn’t sure the working class was seeing much benefit from the recently passed law. He pointed out in that interview that aside from some one-time bonuses, corporations were using the savings to buy back shares and “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”
Well, Rubio did the typical Rubio thing and backtracked from his criticism, writing an op-ed in conservative mag National Review that claimed the “tax cut bill helps workers” and the tax cuts have “been good for Americans” overall.
On Wednesday morning, Politico published a piece by editorial intern Quint Forgey that accurately summed up Rubio walking back his earlier statements on the GOP tax bill. And how did Rubio react? By taking to Twitter to attack the intern.
Although written by intern at Politico, this article is a reminder of how difficult it can be to discuss public policy in political press. Not only did I not back down on tax cut, I doubled down & added detail for rationale https://t.co/4NTDOxcEju
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 2, 2018
Right away, folks on Twitter took Rubio to task while pointing out that Forgey wrote a piece that was dead on target:
Here's a U.S. senator going after _an intern_ for committing the terrible crime of quoting the senator word-for-word.
Marco Rubio a profile in courage as always https://t.co/6zVVYBxY6T
— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) May 2, 2018
A. The intern accurately reported you trying to walk back your comments on the tax bill.
B. Coming at an intern is low even for you.
“If your life depends on Marco Rubio having a spine, you’re already dead.”
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) May 2, 2018
In four years, Marco Rubio will be eligible to join AARP. That is too fucking old to be insulting someone by noting that they're an intern. Anyone older than the intern in question is too old to insult an intern by noting that they're an intern!
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) May 2, 2018
Congratulations to the Politico intern who owned Marco Rubio today. That's a helluva bullet point for the resume.
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 2, 2018
Hey @marcorubio: Politico has the best interns.
— Nahal Toosi (@nahaltoosi) May 2, 2018
Rubio calls out a Politico intern for accurately portraying Rubio’s comments on the GOP tax law. https://t.co/FTpDrooXmV
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 2, 2018
Sincerely hope Sen. Rubio doesn’t speak this way about/show this attitude towards interns on Capitol Hill. Many of us reporters have been interns and work with interns in the newsroom, and most are highly capable, hard-working and eager to do good journalism. https://t.co/WNSVUlDCnd
— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) May 2, 2018
Good work for this Politico intern in calling it like it is on Rubio walking back his tax comments.https://t.co/oNmRnsOIXh
— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) May 2, 2018
Way to go, Marco.
