Marco Rubio slams teens as 'infected' by 'arrogance and boasting' as his approval rating plummets

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) was torn apart on live TV last week during a CNN town hall with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors, and it appears voters were paying attention. In a new Quinnipiac Poll conducted in the days immediately following the town hall, between Feb. 23-26, Rubio held an approval rating of just 38 percent, with 53 percent disapproving of his job in office.

The numbers mark Rubio's lowest approval rating since he joined the Senate in 2011. "Democrats hate every fiber of his being," explains the Miami New Times, "but he's also relatively unpopular amid the far-right Breitbart/Steve Bannon/conspiratorial loon crowd, which hates him for the few centrist stances he's taken in his short career."

With apparently nothing to lose, Rubio slammed teenagers in a tweet Wednesday. "Trashing the Parkland kids like this is probably not going to help those numbers," observed Democratic consultant Brian Fallon.

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The last time Quinnipiac University asked Floridians about Rubio was in July 2016, when his approval rating was 8 points higher. A separate poll, by Morning Consult, saw Rubio with a 47 percent approval rating in the fourth quarter of 2017, giving some indication of how recent his plummet is.

Curiously, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who did not appear at the CNN town hall, saw "by far his highest score ever" in the new Quinnipiac poll, at 49 percent. The poll reached 1,156 Florida voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6. See the full results here.