Deutch slams Rubio’s endorsement of congressional candidate Manjarres

U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch is offering some blunt criticism of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio for his endorsement of congressional candidate Javier Manjarres.

Detuch is also linking Rubio to comments Manjarres has made about people affected by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.

“If [Rubio] wants to endorse in this race because it’s important to him, it’s his prerogative, but for him to choose to endorse someone who has cruelly attacked a grieving father and regularly mocks student survivors, I think that just surprised a lot of people,” Deutch said.

There’s clearly no love lost between the Florida colleagues. Deutch is a Democrat who represents most of Broward north of Interstate 595. Republican Rubio is the state’s junior senator and was an unsuccessful 2016 candidate for his party’s presidential nomination.

Last week, Rubio endorsed Manjarres, who is one of three Republicans in the Aug. 28 primary seeking the party’s nomination to run against Deutch in November.

Deutch said he was surprised to see Rubio “wade into” the primary to endorse a candidate. He suggested that could mean Rubio agrees with comments Manjarres has made about people affected by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. The Parkland school is in the 22nd Congressional District, currently represented by Deutch.

“I was particularly surprised to see him choose to get involved, choose to endorse — I suppose as reflecting his ideas, which is why you endorse someone — someone who attacked a grieving father from Stoneman Douglas, who’s mocked the student survivors from Stoneman Douglas,” Deutch said. “I don’t know why. If this is some signal about the beliefs that Senator Rubio has, I think he ought to be more up front about them because it’s certainly not the image that he puts forth. I was very surprised about that.”

Rubio’s office hadn’t responded by late Tuesday morning to questions posed Monday about Deutch’s comments.

Deutch was referring, in part, to comments Manjarres made on Twitter during exchanges last month with Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime Guttenberg was one of 17 people killed and 17 wounded in the Feb. 14 school massacre.

After Guttenberg wrote a Twitter post critical of a tweet from Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, Manjarres wrote:

“C'mon Fred. I can't only imagine the pain you are feeling over the loss of your daughter, but stop exploiting her death in the name of some political agenda. Your daughter was shot by some lunatic who had an AR-15, not by the gun itself. #Fixit #VoteJavi.”

Manjarres’ response sparked a debate on Twitter, involving him, Guttenberg and dozens of other people.