Marco Rubio tweets Bible verse about ‘scoffers,’ Twitter scoffs

Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s latest biblical tweet did not have the intended effect on social media. Far from “calming the fury,” his quote brought out the “scoffers” in droves.

When Rubio isn’t rattling his saber, demanding Washington overthrow a foreign government or supporting a coup, he whiles his time dispensing biblical wisdom on Twitter. Wednesday’s quotation cited Proverbs 29.

“Scoffers enflame the city, but the wise calm the fury,” the senator tweeted.

The verse, ironically, warns against stirring up the crowd, but that was precisely what the tweet accomplished.

“We scoff at you, senator,” wrote one commenter. “Come talk to your constituents. Hold a town hall. We’ll tell you how to calm the fury.”

“It’s nice that you read the Bible, but you would be a better Christian if you did your job,” another apparent constituent weighed in, adding “Where is the disaster relief?”

Some didn’t appreciate Rubio’s co-mingling of faith and politics, with one person suggesting the senator pushed “tyranny disguised as religion,” while another cited a Bible verse of his own:

“Hypocrites pray in public to appear Godly but don't care about the Lord. -Matthew 6:5”

Others pointed out perhaps the biggest inconsistency of all: Rubio’s diehard support for US sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, which have “inflamed” not cities, but entire nations.

According to a recent study conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, US sanctions on Venezuela may have caused up to 40,000 preventable deaths between 2017 and 2018.

Sanctions on Iran, meanwhile, have “been devastating to innocent civilians,” and are unlikely to achieve Washington’s policy goals, argued David Cortright of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

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