The New York Times has drawn a heap of mockery in the past few weeks for its recent coverage of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., with some of the biggest digs coming from the Left.
For MSNBC and late night comedian Jon Stewart, the paper’s reporting on Rubio’s traffic citations and past struggles with financial hardship is beyond “inconsequential gossip.” It actually makes the Florida senator seem more relatable and sympathetic, they said this week.
“[T]his treatment did certainly look like an opposition dump,” MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said Thursday in reference to a Times report on the senator’s personal finances.
On Tuesday, the Times reported that Rubio has struggled in the past with poor financial planning, including his decision to purchase an $80,000 fishing boat, or as the newspaper called it, a “luxury speedboat.” The times also reported that Rubio used part of the $800,000 advance he was paid in 2012 to write about being the son of a Cuban immigrant to pay off his student loans.
“You bastard! Paying off law school loans? How dare you. At long last, senator, have you no sense of insolvency?” Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart joked Wednesday night.
Though some have noted that the Times report raises important questions about Rubio’s ties to billionaire campaign donor Norman Braman, it was the newspaper’s dressing up of the senator’s house and boat that caught the most grief, burying the important points of the story.
Stewart joked of the Times’ coverage of Rubio’s property, “Oh, what’s the matter, senator? The normal amount of light isn’t good enough for you? I’m Sen. Marco Rubio. I like to roll around in giant patches of sunlight! Like I’m a big ol’ kitty cat. Meow.”
Both Stewart and Mitchell had the same question for the Times: How are these “inconsequential” stories getting past the newspaper’s editors?
“So that’s the question, how is it front-page news?” Mitchell asked Thursday.
Stewart said earlier, “What’s The New York Times going to do? Exercise editorial control? No…It’s like their motto says: ‘Don’t hate the paper, hate the game.'”
MSNBC contributor and USA Today reporter Susan Page argued Thursday that the Times’ coverage of the 2016 presidential candidate actually makes him relatable, and humanizes him.
“This is the kind of criticism or skeptical look that I think makes a lot of voters say, ‘Hey, I can see myself in this area,'” Page said. “This is not a rich guy who has inherited a lot of money from a famous family. This is a guy who is living the life of a lot of Americans.”
The Times’ report last Friday on the Florida senator’s traffic citations — he has been issued a whopping four tickets since 1993 — was met last week with laughs from reporters and pundits who saw the story as inconsequential.
Some even saw it as a veiled attempt to go after Rubio’s wife, Jeanette, who has accrued at least 13 citations in the past 20 years.
The senator’s relatively clean driving record is something “a lot of us could relate to,” said Mitchell.
