Marco Rubio despicably used the 2016 Pulse nightclub mass shooting that stole the lives of 49 people in his state as his excuse to renege on his pledge that he would not seek a second U.S. Senate term. But in the years since, Rubio has done nothing to combat gun violence as he now seeks a third term.
He’s still doing nothing as the nation mourns the 10 dead in Buffalo, and now Uvalde, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered by a mass gunman. Instead, Rubio claims the real danger facing schoolchildren is: drag queens. Seriously.
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Award-winning LGBTQ blog Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters reports that while Rubio fired off excuse after excuse in response to CNN questions about background checks and weapons bans following Uvalde, Rubio did fire off a letter complaining about a Drag Queen Story Hour being held for the children of U.S. service members at a military base in Germany.
“These inappropriate events are extremely divisive at home for good reason; in all cases, they place young children in close proximity with adults who are intentionally and explicitly sexualized,” the letter offensively claimed. But story hours are exactly that: story hours.
Meanwhile, Rubio spews these bigoted lies as his political party is obsessed with children’s genitalia. “Are you gonna go through the procedure?” Missouri state senator Elaine Gannon asked a 14-year-old trans child during a hearing last month, Pink News reported. “You’re asking a 14-year-old on public record about genitals and if people could see that,” the child’s outraged mother responded.
Rubio last week touted getting the story hour canceled, after condemning so-called “cancel culture” in a March tweet. Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters called Rubio’s entire act “nonsense.”
“The event has nothing to do with sex. It teaches children the importance of literacy and respecting differences. Parents generally attend the event with their kids. But more to the point, it is rather self-serving and highly despicable for Rubio to claim that Drag Queen Story is dangerous to children while not supporting common sense gun legislation even after a classroom of children and adults were the victims of gun violence.”
Rubio has also turned his back on the immigrant communities he once claimed he championed. The Florida Immigrant Coalition Votes (FLIC Votes) in April began running Spanish-language ads featuring a pro-immigrant message that Rubio touted nearly a decade ago. The wording is from a voicemail left by Rubio’s late mother.
“This is advice from the person who loves you most in the world,” said a voice portraying the late Oriales García Rubio. “Please don’t mess with the immigrants. They are human beings just like us, and they came to the country for the same reasons that we came: to work, to improve their lives. Don’t hurt them. Poor little ones.” Rubio played the message for a reporter in 2013. He was one of the eight authors of the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform package at the time, which he later disowned.
“This is Rubio’s first leadership audition, his chance to show Republicans that he’s more than a compelling speaker with boyish good looks,” TIME magazine reported at the time. He failed the audition long ago.
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