Senator Marco Rubio Confuses Journalist Germán Dam For An Actual Dam, Hilarity Ensues On Twitter
As the socioeconomic and political crisis in Venezuela continues to rage on, many U.S. politicians have weighed in on the matter, with some continuing to criticize President Nicolás Maduro for his mismanagement of the country as a whole. Aside from massive shortages in food and basic medical supplies, Venezuelan citizens have had to contend with power outages, which continue to interfere with day-to-day activities all across the country.
One prominent critic of Maduro, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, may have gotten a little too zealous when criticizing the disputed Venezuelan leader, which paved the way for a humorous Twitter goof this past weekend.
As reported by Newsweek, Marco Rubio took to Twitter on Saturday, March 9, in order to tweet about a recent explosion in Venezuela. The explosion knocked out a large section of a power grid, causing outages in the Venezuelan state of Bolivar.
In Rubio’s tweet — which has since been deleted, though multiple outlets took screenshots of the slipup — the Florida senator told his followers of an explosion at “German Dam,” which caused a blackout. He also mentioned that this incident caused critically ill patients to die and that multiple flights to and from the capital city of Caracas have been delayed.
“Today another transformer explosion at the German Dam in Bolivar State caused another massive blackout,” Rubio wrote, in a Twitter post that has since been deleted. “The result? Critically ill patients have died, the #Caracas metro remains out of service & few if any flights have arrived at or departed from Caracas in over 20 hours.”
The thing is, there is no such “German Dam.”
It turns out that Rubio made a mistake, confusing the name of a South American journalist (named Germán Dam) with an actual dam. For those wondering, the “G” in Germán is pronounced as an “H.”
Thankfully, Germán himself took to Twitter to clear things up for Sen. Rubio.
“Senator @marcorubio, an important transformer exploded in Bolívar and that, in part, again collapsed the Venezuelan Electric System; however it was not in a dam, much less german,” the journalist wrote. “My name is Germán Dam, I am one of the journalists who published the information.”
How is this still not deleted? You thought German Dam, a journalist, was an ACTUAL dam. You, a sitting US Senator from my state, literally spread fake news. You were corrected by the journalist, whose name is GERMAN DAM. Yet, here it is, still. Bottomless depths of ineptitude.
— Carter Gaddis (@DadScribe) March 10, 2019
Unsurprisingly, many Twitter users took to the platform to ridicule and mock the senator, with a few even accusing Rubio of spreading fake news.
Other than deleting the oft-mocked tweet, Sen. Marco Rubio has yet to comment on his embarrassing Twitter goof.
