Human coathanger and Florida Senator Marco Rubio recently attended a meeting with some colleagues to discuss paid family leave, and joining the elected officials at the meeting was unelected nepotism beneficiary Ivanka Trump. Trump, who has almost certainly had to explain to her father that “paid family leave” isn’t the buyout you give your ex-wives to never show their faces again, greeted the presidential also-ran with the kind of keep-your-distance chill the Trump family usually extends to anyone in a lower income bracket, but Rubio wasn’t having it. So naturally, in a display of the very regular average-Joe behavior that makes both these people so warm and relatable to the American public, the two of them exchanged what their advisors almost certainly assured them is known in common parlance as a “hug.”
In addition to being a demonstration of Rubio’s inability to ever look like his body hasn’t just recently been taken over by miniature aliens who are still figuring out how to work the controls, the picture of this exchange is what the internet likes to refer to as “an opportunity.” Within minutes, exactly what you would expect to happen began happening, and a good time was had by all—presumably save Marco Rubio, who last remembers experiencing a sensation called “fun” sometime around 1986.
Normally, that would be the end of it. But because Marco Rubio is a gift that keeps on giving (mostly tax cuts for the rich and increased pollution in our air and water, but also gaffes), he took to social media to try and “spin” the event via what he seems to believe is a humorous send-up—again, “humor” being something he exhaustively researched for a few hours and is pretty sure he’s got a handle on.
We’re not sure what Rubio’s chief of staff said, but we’re guessing it went a little something… a-like this:
“Ha, okay, good work, you can laugh at your imitation of sentient human behavior by treating it as a hot-button issue! Great, now let’s move on and… wait, what are you—”
“Senator, it kind of kills whatever ‘joke’ may have existed to just repeat it in hopes people will laugh more, and frankly, it wasn’t all that funny to begin with, so maybe—hey, hold on… put down the ph—”
“Look, this is getting really awkward. This just makes you look defensive, like the kid in class who accidentally trips over his own laces and gets laughed at, so he does it again every morning in hopes of showing he’s in on the gag, and the other kids just start to feel embarrassed for him until he OH FOR GOD’S SAKE WHAT ARE YOU—”
[Pulls out flask, takes long swig, muttering to self.] “Mom offered to pay for grad school, but noooo, I wanted to make some serious money by working for Republicans, and now I’ve hitched myself to this walking kernel of plain white rice and [notices what’s happening] REALLY, MARCO? REALLY.”
For her part, Ivanka Trump decided to take pity on Rubio’s flailing efforts at damage control, sort of like how Adam Sandler pretends to pee his pants in Billy Madison so that the kid who actually wet himself doesn’t get made fun of. At which point the entire world just collectively cringed, and even briefly regretted having a laugh, if this ugly senatorial flop-sweat was going to be the result.