A progressive Super PAC, MeidasTouch, operates an online video claiming that Republican Senator Marco Rubio refused to condemn the uprising at the U.S. Capitol.
“Why does Marco Rubio not condemn the terrorist attack on the American Capitol? Because he’s a co-conspirator, ‘the video begins.
The video further says that Rubio applauded the convoy of Donald Trump supporters who were shot in October around a Joe Biden campaign on a Texas highway. (The FBI investigates the incident on the highway.) The video suggests that Rubio’s comments in November in support of the bus harassment make him “responsible” for the death and violence at the Capitol, more than two months later, as the Capitol insurgents “heard the message loud and clear. ”
By Tuesday morning, the video had been viewed 1.1 million times on Twitter since it was posted last Thursday. But that is inaccurate.
Facts first: It is not true that Rubio condemned the attack on the Capitol in January. He repeatedly denounced the uprising, saying it was “inexcusable”, “disgusting”, “unpatriotic” and “anti-American anarchy”. And while the video reasonably claims that Rubio endorsed Trump supporters’ concern about the Biden campaign in Texas, there is no hard evidence for Tuesday for the video’s insinuation that Rubio’s comments participated in the actions of insurgents.
Rubio’s comments on the bus incident
The video’s description of Rubio’s comments on the bus incident is fair enough. Although Rubio’s spokesman Nick Iacovella argued on Monday that it’s clear in the context that Rubio has applauded pro-Trump convoys and boat parades in general, and not harassment of campaign buses – Rubio is against ‘any violence’ or ‘any aggressive tactics’ on behalf of any candidate opposed. , Iacovella said – we do not think Rubio made it clear at the time. He said:
‘I saw a video of these people in Texas yesterday. Have you seen it? All the cars on the road with the – we like what they did. But here’s the thing they do not know: we do it every day in Florida. I like to see the boat trips; you saw the boat parades. We thank all the great patriots on behalf of the President in the boat parades. But we want them to know: we’re been doing this for four years! ”
The question of responsibility for the Capitol uprising is complicated; we can not definitively say whether Rubio’s words played some role. But it is important to note that the FBI did not allege in court documents this morning that this Rubio remark or any other Rubio remark was a motivating factor for any of the insurgents he has so far charged. And it is also noteworthy that Trump, whose words allegedly inspired the actions of some people in the mob, himself defended the Texas convoy in tweets to a giant audience.
Meiselas told CNN in his email that there was an “indisputable direct line” between Rubio’s words about the bus incident and “the circumstances that led to the attack” on the Capitol. This assertion, about Rubio contributing to harmful political “conditions”, is a more nuanced and defensible assertion than the suggestion in the video that insurgents heard and acted on Rubio’s words.
Rubio’s comments on the uprising
MeidasTouch was founded last year by brothers Brett Meiselas, Ben Meiselas and Jordan Meiselas. A slogan on the Super PAC’s Twitter account and website is ‘Because the truth is gold’.
But Brett Meiselas defends the ad, including the inaccurate claim for its opening.
He argued in an email to CNN on Monday that Rubio had merely expressed ‘performative’ concerns about the Capitol attack rather than a ‘true’ condemnation. He said Rubio had shown a lack of seriousness with the attack by countering Trump’s accusations, by turning from criticism of the attack to criticism of Democrats, and by striking a false balance between the Capitol uprising and summer protests against the races (which were largely peaceful but involved riots)
However, the video itself does not provide this kind of nuanced critique of the strength of Rubio’s reactions to the attack. Rather, the video begins by asking why Rubio would not condemn the uprising at all.
And that’s just wrong. Rubio issued sentence after sentence.
While the January 6 uprising was going on, Rubio tweeted“There is nothing patriotic about what is happening on Capitol Hill. It is an anti-American anarchy in the third world style. ‘
That night on Fox News, Rubio told Tucker Carlson’s host that the uprising was ‘completely, one hundred percent inexcusable’, regardless of the motivation of the participants.
In another Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo on January 10, Rubio said of the uprising: ‘It’s disgusting. This is unpatriotic. This is contrary to everything we stand for. He said the participants were a ‘rogue gallery’, which specifically called white supremacists, supporters of the QAnon conspiracy movement and Proud Boys.
In a Tampa Bay Times guest column for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, writes Rubio: ‘The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., has a special meaning today as our nation struggles with the unthinkable acts carried out by a violent, conspiratorial crowd as opposed to fundamental elements of our democracy. ”
Rubio’s other criticisms
Rubio has certainly opened himself up to criticism because he no longer spoke out forcefully or regularly to reject Trump’s lies about the election. Although he, along with some of his colleagues in the Senate, did not object to Biden’s election votes, or Trump went along with unfounded allegations of mass fraud, he also gave a sympathetic, democratic explanation as to why some Americans believe these allegations. .
On January 8, Rubio posts a video statement on Twitter that criticism of the uprising was mixed with criticism of others. He begins: “The events we saw this week should make each of us sick. Bullying of the kind you see in third world countries has not only taken place in America, but also in your Capitol building. I do not care what hat they wear, I can not care what banner they wear – riots must be rejected by everyone every time. ”
He then shifted gears.
He criticized ‘left’, which he said was hypocritical because he condemned the uprising after ‘justifying’ riots in the summer. He argued that many Americans were convinced that the election was unfair because of pro-democracy bias among the media, social media enterprises and the civil servants responsible for election laws. He claims that, of the people who came to Washington, DC to protest the election, ‘99% ” had nothing to do with the mob ‘at the Capitol.
It’s all questionable at best – and Rubio did not want to explain in the video that the election was in fact completely legal. Yet he unequivocally condemned the uprising that the MeidasTouch video claims he did not condemn.