Back in August, Florida Senator Marco Rubio was playing catch at the Iowa State Fair, and accidentally hit a kid right in the face with a football. Rubio “got his revenge” on Tuesday, with a hilarious video of the kid catching the ball, followed by Rubio pummeling conservative figures with a pigskin.
Footage of Rubio hitting the kid became a viral meme on the internet last year, leading to joking comparisons between his presidential campaign and the 2015 “Inflate-Gate” football scandal with the Patriots. “The QB always gets the blame,” Rubio quipped.
Tuesday’s video opened with news reports on the unfortunate headshot, showing late night comedian Conan O’Brien noting: “Rubio hit him in the face and knocked him down.” The voices of various commentators cut in and out, and end on “clearly, it was a bad throw.”
Cut to Rubio in a football stadium, saying: “Come on Marco, you can do this.” The kid who got hit in the head nods to him, and with great fanfare, catches the pigskin in a mock-inspiring moment. As the young man runs toward the end zone, Rubio stands back, triumphantly raising his hands in the air — “Touchdown!” Then the grown man, senator, and presidential candidate does a little victory dance.
Let the silliness begin! Rubio throws another football, and Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist catches it. Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson gets hit right in the head, while Colorado Senator Cory Gardner incurs Rubio’s wrath, declaring, “Listen, these [Miami] Dolphins suck!”
Perhaps the most hilarious moment comes with South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy — head of the infamous Benghazi committee. Gowdy mentions the “dangers of flying footballs,” declaring “that investigation should be bi-partisan, it should be bi-cameral…” Interrupted by one flying football, he catches it, and announces, “It should be serious.”
In a throwback joke to Rubio’s water bottle break in his response to Obama’s State of the Union in 2013, a football slams into an open bottle of water, knocking it over and spilling it everywhere. Neurosurgeon and fellow presidential candidate Ben Carson catches a football, with the caption “Gifted Hands?” American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks gets interrupted by another flying pigskin, and Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe catches a football, then throws a snowball back.
With this hilarious video, produced and distributed with the conservative website Independent Journal Review, Rubio turned a small campaign flub into a ridiculously funny campaign ad. Go Marco!
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