State department official reportedly deleted abusive tweets about Rubio [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Mon 10 Mar 2025 16.05 EDT
Last modified on Mon 10 Mar 2025 16.34 EDT
A top official in the US state department deleted abusive tweets in which he said the then Florida senator Marco Rubio – who is now secretary of state – had a “low IQ” and spread unsubstantiated rumors about his sexuality, CNN reported.
In tweets from 7 January 2021, Darren Beattie referred to scurrilous online rumors and added: “Forget the war promotion and the neocon sugar daddies, forget the low IQ, forget the 2016 primary, Rubio is TOUGH ON CHINA (and good for military industrial complex) So be a good DOG and vote for him!!!” The day before, Donald Trump had incited supporters to storm Congress in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, an attack Rubio condemned.
On 7 January, after repeating baseless innuendo about Rubio, Beattie posted: “Does Marco Rubio have a future in politics?” Rubio served another four years in the Senate before becoming secretary of state under Trump, despite having run against Trump in 2016 and amid widespread criticism of his embrace of policy positions, particularly regarding rapprochement with Russia, that contradict views long held in the Senate.
Beattie was a speechwriter in the first Trump administration, until CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, a specialist in unearthing old online content, reported that Beattie attended a white nationalist conference in 2016.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/state-department-marco-rubio-tweets
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