The Washington Post has concluded that Sen. Marco Rubio's use of a GOP credit card for personal expenses while he was a Florida state representative saga "isn't really a scandal."
The newspaper's influential "Fact Checker" column — which looked into the GOP presidential candidate's use of the card during his years in the Sunshine State's House of Representatives from 2006-2008 — concludes:
"Based on the information released so far, a mountain's been made out of molehill by the media and Rubio's opponents."
One of the most critical is Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who said Rubio "has a disaster on his finances, he has a disaster on his credit cards."
But "Fact Checker's" Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes:
"We don't make a judgment call on whether Rubio should have made personal charges, or whether some of the charges the party paid for should have been considered as 'party business.'
"But what readers should remember is that Rubio's total charges — about $160,000 total on the corporate card — were relatively small compared to other state party officials who ran up $500,000, even $1.3 million, on their party cards."
The column routinely issues one to four "Pinocchios" at the conclusion of its investigations — a nod to the fairytale puppet created by a woodcarver named Geppetto, whose nose grows when he tells lies.
Of its look into the credit card issue, it says, "Rubio's carefully worded explanation doesn't quite rise to the level of a Geppetto Checkmark, but it is accurate enough that it does not warrant even a single Pinocchio."
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