Florida senior Sen. Marco Rubio has made himself seen and heard a lot lately — unfortunately.
He did TV interviews on “Face the Nation” and “NewsNation” and made an infrequent appearance at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he has helped to obstruct confirmations of dozens of President Joe Biden’s ambassadorial nominees, including the Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt.
Rubio is up for re-election this year. But the more he opens his mouth, the less he appears to deserve six more years.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” he defended the Republican National Committee’s jaw-dropping declaration that the House select committee investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection is “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
However, he alluded to only one such person, who turned out to be properly under investigation for having signed one of those fraudulent elector certificates intended to keep Donald Trump in the White House.
Afraid of Trump?
In the same interview, Rubio couldn’t bring himself to say that Trump was wrong when he claimed Vice President Mike Pence could have discarded electoral certificates for Biden. Rubio said he didn’t believe a vice president had such authority, but he left viewers with the impression that he was too timid to contradict Trump directly.
On “NewsNation,” Rubio took exception to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s description of the event (accurately) as a “violent insurrection.”
It was a “dangerous riot … a violent riot,” Rubio conceded, but he insisted it was not an “insurrection” because it didn’t come close to succeeding.
Nonsense. The federal law on “rebellion or insurrection” criminalizes the attempt without regard to the outcome. It also states that anyone convicted under that title is “incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
That may explain Rubio’s semantic quibble and parsing of words to avoid stating the obvious.
It caters to some of his colleagues in Congress as well as their idol, Trump, who could be barred from ever again holding office by terms of the 14th amendment if they’re found to have contributed to an insurrection.
To his credit, Rubio did not join Florida’s junior senator, Rick Scott, in voting against accepting any of Biden’s electors on that terrible day. But it does him no credit now to portray the events of Jan. 6 as anything less than they were.
Fact-checking failure
Rubio needs to fact-check himself. He boasted of his signature on a Republican bill to ban the U.S. government from distributing pipes to smoke crack and other illegal substances, but it did no such thing, according to Politifact, a leading fact-checker.
The claim was based on a conservative media source, the Washington Free Beacon, which misinterpreted a Department of Health and Human Services announcement of a “substance harm reduction” grant. The 75-page grant proposal, Politifact said, “does not mention crack pipes.”
What’s Rubio smoking? He should have read it rather than relying on a second-hand account. Harm reduction kits, which typically contain disinfectant wipes, rubber mouthpieces and filters, are intended to help keep addicts from unintentionally killing themselves.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Feb. 8, Rubio took the lead in questioning Lipstadt about her past criticism of Republicans — in particular of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., for a tweet that said he would have been more concerned about the violence of Jan. 6 had the overwhelmingly white rioters been Black Lives Matter or antifa protesters.
“This is white supremacy/nationalism. Pure and simple,” Lipstadt had tweeted in reply.
That’s the truth, but her willingness to call out a senator is the main reason she has not been confirmed as Biden’s special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism worldwide. Her nomination has been on hold since July. Rubio, who represents a state with one of the nation’s largest Jewish populations, is part of that problem.
Time to vote ‘yes’
Lipstadt, an Emory University professor, is one of the world’s leading authorities on antisemitism. She famously won a libel suit filed against her for having exposed the British writer David Irving as a Holocaust denier.
At the hearing, she cited past criticisms of Democrats as well, but it didn’t mollify Johnson, who isn’t a member of the committee but showed up to accuse her of “malicious poison.”
Johnson, the most controversial senator from Wisconsin since Red-baiting Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, trumpets Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him.
According to news accounts, Rubio’s questions to Lipstadt were appropriate, not hostile. But the time is long past for him to choose between a fellow Republican senator who can’t bear the truth and the professor who put that senator to shame.
The committee should confirm Lipstadt with no more delay, and Rubio’s vote should be an enthusiastic “yes.”
