The Five Weirdest Things Marco Rubio Has Ever Lied About

In addition to being a charlatan, power-grabber, and unbridled coward, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is also just really, really bad at lying. He doesn't lie like Donald Trump, who vomits falsehoods so outlandish that they take four full news-cycle days to rebut. He also doesn't lie like, say, most mainstream Democrats, who promise people things such as universal health care or student-loan forgiveness every four years while blatantly knowing they won't accomplish any of those things while in office.

No, Rubio's lies are weirder than that. And by "weird," we mean that his mistruths tend to be obviously, eminently, and provably false. And when confronted with the fact that he just blurted out a pile of defenseless garbage, he just kinda stammers and fails to defend himself. Take, for instance, this week, when he lied about not being invited to a citizen-organized town hall despite video evidence of at least one invitation.

So given Little Marco's very bad PR week, we figured we'd recount some of the weirdest things we've heard the senator lie about during his time in Florida politics. Here we go:

1. That he wasn't running for Senate again in 2016
Your honor, please allow us to present Exhibit A:
2. That his family fled the Castro regime to come to America
As Rubio rose to prominence in Sunshine State politics, he promoted himself as the sort of Everyman Miami Cuban — and claimed repeatedly he was the son of "exiles" who had fled to the States after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. But they hadn't: The Washington Post discovered that Rubio's ancestors arrived in the U.S. in 1956, when Castro was hiding in Mexico fromCuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Again: Why lie about something so obviously verifiable?

3. Claiming he was never into Mormonism
Raise your hand if you've ever gotten in trouble for denying your Mormon heritage in public. Nobody? None of you? "What the hell sort of person gets him or herself involved in that kind of debacle?" you ask. Well, Rubio did: He got involved in Mormonism around age 7 or 8 when his family moved to Nevada; then he later claimed Mormonism was "never an influence" in his life, only to be contradicted by one of his cousins, who told BuzzFeed that he was "totally into it."

4. That those fancy boots he was once caught wearing were made in Wisconsin
Nope — the Florsheim shoes he wore once that everyone made a fuss about (for absolutely no reason, to Rubio's credit) were made in India. Just check the tag before you make comments like that, bro. Alternate headline: "Politician Corrected by Information Written Inside Own Shoe."

@dsamuelsohn @maggieNYT @politico

Maybe he asked Rubio to borrow these stylish boots for his trip to the DMV. pic.twitter.com/olitHH51mZ

— WeisseRose2016 (@WeisseRose2016) December 23, 2016

5.  That Florida had enacted 57 laws from his book, 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future
What's simpler than counting a bunch of laws from a 100-point checklist? Apparently a lot of things, because PolitiFact Florida later said only 24 such laws had been fully enacted.