Marco Rubio triggered after Chinese journalist calls fellow senator ‘LIFETIME B**CH’ for slurring his country

Twitter is a wonderful tool for connecting people, making it possible for two US senators to trade insults with a journalist working for Chinese state media. A great power competition the world deserves.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio was apparently offended on Thursday by some unprintable language he found on Twitter, so much so that he shared it with his 4.2 million followers. China Daily columnist and EU bureau chief, Chen Weihua, had called fellow Republican legislator from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, a b-word. The journalist swiftly responded that his insult was “an understatement”.

The strongly worded description of course didn’t come out of the blue. Chen lashed out at Senator Blackburn for her assertion that China “has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing”. In his other responses he called her “the most racist and ignorant US Senator I have seen” and a “lowlife”.

For some reason Rubio didn’t care to mention what provoked the profane reaction. The Chinese journalist is far from being the only one to say that Blackburn’s remark smacked of racism and Sinophobia.

Chen, who used to be China Daily’s New York correspondent, is known to occasionally use swear words on Twitter. Last month he used the f-word to refer to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas for his putting China on a list of threats to the “transatlantic community” on par with climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. The tweet has since been deleted.

For what it’s worth, Blackburn herself doesn't seem to be offended by Chen’s characterization. On the contrary, she is wearing the insults on her sleeve and used the opportunity to attack China over its much-criticized Xinjiang policy. Many Western politicians claim that Beijing is brutally suppressing the Uighur population of the autonomous region, an accusation that China denies.

Meanwhile Rubio’s day on Twitter included not only calling out a Chinese journalist for lack of courtesy, but also lecturing New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on what she should do online. Retaliation followed soon after.

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