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.
After leaving the White House, Beattie founded Revolver News, a far-right website which spread January 6 conspiracy theories. Last month, Beattie was made acting under-secretary of state for public diplomacy, an appointment that stoked protests from Democrats and progressive commentators.
Responding to remarks such as “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work”, the commentator Van Jones called Beattie’s appointment “shameless and despicable” and said the Trump administration was “bring[ing] in people out of the trash can … horrible people who you wouldn’t hire to run a bodega”.
On Monday, Kaczynski and fellow CNN reporter Em Steck reported that while Beattie had left most of his offensive comments online, he appeared to have “purged” criticism of Rubio from X, the social media platform owned by the Trump ally Elon Musk.
In other now-deleted posts, Beattie called Rubio “fake” and questioned his bona fides as a pro-Trump Republican.
Beattie told CNN: “Secretary Rubio is 100% America First and it’s a tremendous honor to work for him in advancing President Trump’s world historical agenda.”
Rubio has declined to comment on Beattie’s appointment.
On 5 February, the former senator told reporters Beattie would focus on “not wanting this Department of State to be involved in censorship”, then dodged a question about criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism.
Asked if he had seen Beattie’s X account, Rubio said, “OK, thank you guys,” and ended the briefing.
