Marco Rubio bashed by conservative writer for pandering to ‘deranged’ Trump supporters

Sen. Marco Rubio's attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci are thinly transparent appeals to the "most deranged" Republican voters, according to one conservative writer.

The Florida Republican accused the top infectious disease expert of lying about the effectiveness of masks and the numbers necessary for herd immunity against coronavirus, and The Bulwark columnist Christian Schneider called him out as a pandering hypocrite.

"These word games are done in bad faith," Schneider wrote. "Because you'll notice that there are still people — big, famous, Republican people — who ostentatiously refuse to wear masks in high-risk situations. And Marco Rubio, who is absolutely outraged that Fauci didn't command every American to go out and buy up N95s in February, has absolutely nothing to say about them."

Fauci's recommendations have changed as the pandemic has unfolded and scientists better understand the deadly coronavirus, but Schneider said Rubio most certainly understands that.

"Rubio isn't doing this because he's stupid," Schneider wrote. "He's doing it because he's an ambitious coward desperate to earn the approval of a deranged man who still has a chokehold on the Republican party. And it only serves to sow distrust among the segment of the population which already views scientific expertise as a marker of the evil 'elites.'"

Rubio only cares about himself, and appealing to voters he thinks he'll need in the next election, Schneider said.

"Trying to undercut Fauci is simply a tactic meant to appeal to the most deranged voting bloc of the GOP — the QAnon-friendly conspiracy theorists who bought into the 'Plandemic' hoax that suggested Fauci had created the coronavirus as a money-making scheme," Schneider wrote. "And when Rubio beats up on Fauci, what he's really doing is signaling that he thinks those people are in charge of his party."