At noon on July 19, failed presidential candidate (who was also missing from the RNC for reasons of campaigning, he said), opened up the doors of a furniture business affected by the closing of South Orange Avenue for the three week media circus last month.
The set-up was that Rubio, a concerned Floridian who brushes his teeth with Small Business™ toothpaste, was to speak with the business owners about how he would handle the obvious ledger-lack impugning some operations from one of the Orlando’s growing business centers. His answers on that subject were few, except to state that he was doing his best to mitigate the bureaucracy that will eventually lead to nearly $20 million in funds being distributed by the One Orlando foundation and its ancillary causes. In short, he had no answers.
He did, however, have to face down a multilingual media audience for which he had already prepared thin and meaningless responses. There were no revelations there. Local advocate and sometimes Watermark writer David Moran pulled the “blood on your hands” card causing Rubio to crack a smile for no reason (other than the fact that he thinks alternative extremism makes him look like the reasonable one). Moran was great, by the way. Rubio spoke briefly of “some disagreements on things like marriage equality” but smoothed over the rest with a smirk as used car salesmen do.
When it came our time to pop a “Senator!” question, we went for the jugular, effectively asking Rubio if he or his party were ever going to admit that this was a hate crime against gays and Latinos, adding that those termite-ridden planks have been part of the GOP forever. Rubio kept bringing up “perverted” Islamic extremists saying “strange” things, which is cute, we guess. But Rubio can’t answer for the suffering of the people here. He just can’t.
But we certainly had some questions.
It’s a good day when you get to ask Marco Rubio to his face whether he thinks that it was “perverted” Islam or a hate crime against the LGBT community to kill 49 gay people and maim 53 more with an assault rifle in Orlando, and whether the message of the conservative right perpetuates this hatred. And he says, “I don’t wish death on anyone. We all know what radicalized Islamist people teach their followers about attacking and killing certain groups.” And you respond, on cue, “Like the Republican Party and its platform.”
ZING. Press conference over.
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