David Hogg posted a viral tweet Thursday morning claiming that Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, was afraid to meet him and would be “triggered” by the college student’s presence.
That was untrue.
According to exchanges on social media compiled at the Daily Wire and elsewhere, Mr. Hogg not only had been set to meet with Mr. Rubio on Thursday afternoon, but even had press coverage scheduled.
“You must be confused as we had a 2p meeting scheduled with you. However, since you are lying and clearly using this all for self-promotion, that meeting is now cancelled,” Michael Needham, Mr. Rubio’s chief of staff, told Mr. Hogg on Twitter.
“Don’t lie again — we have receipts,” he warned.
Mr. Hogg, a liberal gun-control activist who survived a 2018 school shooting, had talked trash Thursday morning about Mr. Rubio’s fear of him.
“Rubio staff said I can’t meet with him or his staff because I ‘trigger’ him,” he claimed in a tweet that tagged Mr. Rubio and got more than 5,000 retweets and quote-tweets.
“No one said such a thing,” Mr. Needham replied.
As for the meeting, Mr. Needham not only told Mr. Hogg that the meeting was off, but said there were independent witnesses to its having been scheduled.
“The reporter doing a profile of you knows the meeting is real since she was emailing yesterday with our comms team about it,” he told him before giving the “receipts” warning.
Mr. Hogg apologized for calling Mr. Rubio a coward as “an honest mistake.” He deleted the false tweet and blamed his staffers.
“An honest mistake, got our meetings confused in the flurry and my staff misinformed me. I apologize,” Mr. Hogg wrote Friday afternoon after the cancellation.
However, he added in a tweet that tagged Mr. Rubio, “we’d still love to meet with you and have an honest, respectful discussion.”
