Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., delivered his party's response to President Obama's State of the Union Address. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP) Story Highlights The Florida senator drank from a bottle of water near end of his State of the Union response 
 
 Twitter says there were 9,200 tweets per minute regarding Rubio's water 
 
 Rubio gets in on the joke by tweeting picture of the water bottle 
 
 WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio's sip of water near the end of his response to President Obama's State of the Union was the thirst quencher that sent people flocking to Twitter. 
 
 The social media site blew up when the Florida Republican reached for a bottle of Poland Spring water as he was outlining the GOP's vision to help the middle class. His speech text ran for five pages, about half the length of Obama's remarks. 
 
 Abby Huntsman, the daughter of former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman tweeted: "That water bottle shouldn't have been so far for him to grab. Too much awkwardness in one speech! #Rubio #SOTU." 
 
 Another from Ana Marie Cox, a blogger and the founding editor of Wonkette: "Speech with which Rubio stepped to the side to grab a drink inversely proportional to how long he wanted it. POOR GUY." 
 
 Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who helped elect President Bill Cllinton, tweeted, "Marco Rubio, the man you want to have a desperate gulp of water with." 
 
 In recognition of his social-media moment, Rubio took to Twitter as well and posted a photo of the small bottle of water. It appeared to be drained of its contents. 
 
 Twitter said there were about 9,200 tweets per minute at about 10:43 p.m. ET, after Rubio's sip of water. For a short time, #watergate and Poland Spring were trending on the micro-blogging site. 
 
 Some Republicans sympathized with Rubio's plight. GOP strategist Mike Murphy said on Twitter that the incident detracted from the content of the senator's remarks. "Strong material but the trivial water bit will get endless attention. #LifeUnfair." 
 
 Garrett Jackson, who was GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's "body man" during the 2012 campaign, blamed the incident on poor staff work. "I would have had that water bottle closer, had it been the Gov," Jackson said on Twitter. "Haha. Marco needs an aide." 
 
 Contributing: Susan Davis 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/UcAqqG ||||| In May 2008, when Marco Rubio retired as Florida’s House speaker, he bid his colleagues farewell with a passionate defense of American exceptionalism. Standing on the floor in front of the speaker’s rostrum, Rubio invoked boatloads of refugees washing up on American shores, quoted John F. Kennedy and lauded political dissent. 
 
 “It’s honestly one of the greatest political speeches I’ve seen in my life,” said Republican operative Gregg Keller. “To this day, I can’t watch it without getting a lump in my throat.” 
 
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 But youthful charisma wasn’t the only aspect of Rubio’s delivery that has stuck with Keller. “He’s got this ice,” recalled the veteran operative. “He’s got this water in this cup that’s got ice and it’s making weird noises.” Indeed, video of the speech shows Rubio halting mid-delivery at dramatic moments to reach down to a table in front of him and take noisy swigs from a Styrofoam cup. 
 
 Rubio, of course, became famous five years later for diving for his water bottle and taking a sip in the midst of a roughly 14-minute nationally televised response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. He responded in good humor by tweeting out a picture of the empty bottle, and over the next week his PAC raised $100,000 off the sale of water bottles. 
 
 But the water tic has persisted and remained noticeable on the campaign trail this fall, drawing comment from those who have worked with and watched the Florida senator. Like Richard Nixon’s perspiring or John Boehner’s crying, Rubio’s need for constant hydration is a bodily quirk that impinges on his political life. 
 
 The 44-year-old senator takes care to ensure the availability of water at his public events and can be particular about how he takes it. His advance team has mandated exact requirements for the vessels he will drink out of: stemless glasses — not stemmed ones or water bottles. He reaches for it constantly during public remarks. Its absence has thrown off his delivery, and he and his campaign have acknowledged its presence by attempting to turn it into a joke. On the trail, he has even asked hecklers to time their outbursts around his breaks for it. 
 
 “Marco does have a water thing,” said one longtime Rubio associate who has been affiliated with his past campaigns. “I don’t know what it is. He says he just gets thirsty, but it’s clear it’s just a nervous tic. It’s something he just has to have around, like a security blanket or something.” 
 
 A spokesman for Rubio, Alex Conant, declined comment for this story, saying only that “POLITICO has lost its mind.” In a recent New Yorker profile, Rubio attributed his extraordinary need for water to unspecified allergies developed since 2011. “I said, ‘How come I’ve never had allergies before, and now, suddenly, the last four years I’ve developed allergies? And the answer the doctor gave me was: ‘Well, because you’re travelling to places that you never used to travel to before.’” 
 
 But the testimony of Rubio’s longtime associates and his 2008 speech belie this explanation, indicating that Rubio’s water tic predated his career in the United States Senate, even if it escaped notice before then. 
 
 Even during brief remarks — like his speech at CPAC in February 2010 and his Senate victory speech in November — Rubio has consistently had water at hand and snuck sips of it into his delivery. Its absence, meanwhile, has thrown him off balance. 
 
 When Rubio addressed CPAC in 2012, event staffers failed to stock the podium with fresh water for his speech. At an early applause line, Rubio — who had been visibly struggling with dry mouth and licking the inside of his mouth and his lips, as he often does during speeches — reached down for his water with his right hand, and coming up empty bent his knees and peered under the podium but did not find what he was looking for. 
 
 “I remember standing backstage and cursing out loud because there was nothing we could do,” said a person staffing the event. “It caused him some awkward pauses throughout the speech.” Halting his speech again for another applause line several minutes later, Rubio brought his empty right hand up to his nose, lowered it, brought it up again to his lips and rubbed them. 
 
 At some point, Rubio became self-conscious about the water breaks, and he began narrating them at several events later that year. 
 
 Speaking at a major Republican fundraiser in March 2012, the senator sipped from a glass of water and laid it down on the ground next to him. “I hope I don’t need a drink of water during the speech, that’s a long reach down there, but I’ll — you’ll forgive me,” he said. 
 
 Campaigning for Mitt Romney at an elementary school in Las Vegas in July, he took advantage of extended applause to reach for his bottle. “Keep clapping. I can drink some water while you do,” he said. “If you’re here to heckle me today, could you wait another five minutes, because that gives me the moment to get my water.” 
 
 When an attendee shouted “Marco for vice president” at the same rally and prompted the audience to break out in wild applause, Rubio went again to his water, and said, “Hey, that was not the kind of heckler I was expecting, but thank you for the water, I appreciate it.” 
 
 Taking the stage after Clint Eastwood’s memorable performance at the Republican National Convention in August, Rubio again took a swig. “I think I just drank Clint Eastwood’s water,” he said. “Thank you.” 
 
 AP and Getty photos. 
 
 But six months later, it was Rubio’s water, not Eastwood’s histrionics, that would steal the show. 
 
 On Feb. 12, 2013, Rubio delivered the official Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union, his highest-profile gig to date — and one meant to showcase the gifts of the party’s fresh-faced talent. But his turn in the national spotlight was overshadowed by his awkward break for water, which launched a thousand Internet memes. On Twitter, it was called #Watergate, and it has remained a defining moment of his career since. 
 
 Rubio took it with good humor. In one television appearance following the rebuttal, he ostentatiously chugged from a bottle. 
 
 The next month, arriving backstage at CPAC 2013, he asked for a five-gallon jug as a prop. No jug was available, so he took to the stage and, with both hands, scooped up three glasses of water from behind the podium. “Let me just say I love the hospitality, but this is an exaggeration,” he joked. The crowd loved it. 
 
 But 15 minutes later, water once again knocked him off his game as he reached down for a sip, and the CPAC audience broke into applause. “Thank you. Never in the history of the world has water been so popular; I appreciate it,” said Rubio sarcastically. “Never. Let me tell you. No,” he continued, but then paused, lowered his head, raised his hand to his face and took a deep breath before getting back on track. 
 
 The water thing had not gone away — and it still hasn’t. 
 
 As Rubio’s standing in the 2016 nomination fight has improved, Donald Trump has seized on the senator’s bodily functions, repeatedly calling attention both to Rubio’s drinking and to his sweating. “Rubio, I've never seen a young guy sweat that much. He's drinking water, water, water,” Trump told ABC News in September. “I never saw anything like this with him, with the water.” 
 
 On Fox News, Rubio responded to the attacks, "I drink water. So what? And I only sweat when it’s hot." 
 
 But people who have worked with Rubio said sweat has also been a distraction for him. “You hear Donald Trump make fun of him for it. But he’s onto something,” said Rubio’s longtime associate. “I don’t think Marco sweats that much more. But Marco thinks he does. He’s always wiping, wiping, wiping sweat — even if he’s not sweating. It can drive you crazy if you’re watching him closely.” 
 
 The person who has staffed CPACs at which Rubio has spoken agreed with Trump’s assessment. “He sweats quite a bit, and when you sit down under television lights it gets very hot,” said the person, who recalled the issue arising when Rubio did not have water during his speech at the 2012 gathering. “Not only was he very thirsty, but he was under very bright lights. … Beads of sweat were just popping up on his forehead.” 
 
 In private, water remains a preoccupation of Rubio’s campaign. 
 
 At one stop along the campaign trail this fall, Rubio’s advance team miffed organizers who have hosted multiple presidential candidates by dictating accommodations down to the type of vessel the senator’s water would be served in: a stemless glass, rather than a stemmed one or a water bottle. 
 
 “Huckabee didn’t need water,” said an event organizer, who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld and the event not be made identifiable. “It was the first time that glassware entered into one of these events.” 
 
 In public, Rubio has continued to work to make water an endearing totem of his public persona — one that, if all goes according to plan, could occupy a place similar to Ronald Reagan’s beloved jelly beans in the American imagination. 
 
 At the second Republican debate in September, he found room for it in his opening statement. “I’m honored to be at the Reagan Library, at a place that honors the man who inspired not just my interest in public service, but also our love for country. And I’m also aware that California has a drought, and so that’s why I made sure I brought my own water,” he said, brandishing a bottle of it. 
 
 At the end of a September campaign video in which Rubio answers a series of personal questions while being tossed a football, he is asked, “Most important preparation for a big game or a big speech?” Rubio responds, “Make sure that there’s water nearby,” as he catches a bottle. 
 
 In a message that plays at the end of videos on his campaign’s YouTube account, Rubio speaks straight to the camera and says, “Make sure to click below to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can get our campaign’s latest videos.” After a pause, the senator who has risen so quickly through the rungs of American politics says, “Go ahead, I’ll wait,” and reaches down for a bottle of water, taking a swig. 
 
 Marc Caputo contributed to this report. ||||| Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke participates in the 2018 National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at the Ellipse near the White House. (Oliver Contreras/Pool/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) 
 
 Today in low-blow moments in Washington, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke shot back at a congressman’s criticism by attacking his struggles with alcoholism. 
 
 Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling on the scandal-plagued Zinke to resign. The secretary’s defense was not on the merits of Grijalva’s argument, but to dredge up a three-year-old settlement paid to a former female staffer who accused the congressman of being drunk and creating a hostile work environment. 
 
 Grijalva, who is slated to become the next chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, which oversees Interior Department programs, was known to be a drinker. Zinke’s Tune Inn reference is to a beloved Capitol Hill bar that was frequented by Grijalva. The bar at one time had a cartoon of him shirtless on the beach admiring a sand castle that spelled out PUBLIC OPTION, according to the HuffPost. This was during the health-care debate, when Democrats had to concede that the Affordable Care Act would not include a government-run health-care program. 
 
 That HuffPost article posted after the bar caught fire in 2011. It was filled with remembrances, including about the night the ACA passed and Democratic members, staffers and journalists descended on the bar for late-night imbibing. (The Democrats to celebrate and the Hill reporters to witness the spectacle, as this Fix reporter can attest.) 
 
 Grijalva was there and was described as having “a bottle of Bud and a shot of whiskey in front of him.” 
 
 In an interview this year with News 4 Tucson, Grijalva admitted that he once had a drinking problem, but said he had gotten it under control. He did not say how long ago that was. 
 
 “I dealt with it, and I feel comfortable that I got past that,” he said. 
 
 “Once you wrestled the demons and you beat them, you beat them. And I — and I — feel very comfortable that demon’s beat,” he added. 
 
 The Trump White House and Congress have taken addiction seriously, at least as it pertains to opioids, treating it as the disease it is rather than a moral failing. One of the hardest parts of any addiction is the stigma associated with it. A study published in Clinical Psychological Science argued that “shaming people for difficult-to-curb behaviors may be exactly the wrong approach to take” and leads to worse health outcomes, including relapse. 
 
 [Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke remains defiant amid ethics probes] 
 
 Grijalva responded to Zinke in a statement: “The American people know who I’m here to serve, and they know in whose interests I’m acting. They don’t know the same about Secretary Zinke.” 
 
 He also issued this tweet: 
 
 The allegations against Secretary Zinke are credible and serious. Instead of addressing the substantive issues raised in this morning’s op-ed, he's resorting to personal attacks. https://t.co/QRiVPAjxPv — Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) November 30, 2018 
 
 Zinke has faced some 17 investigations into his conduct, several of which are ongoing. President Trump has said he plans to review the ethics investigations involving Zinke. 
 
 The tactic of attacking rather than defending or owning up to mistakes when being confronted with them is a strategy employed and perfected by Zinke’s boss. Trump calls it “counterpunching” and examples of him practicing that abound. ||||| 3 years ago 
 
 Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama attended the Gridiron Club and Foundation’s annual dinner in Washington Saturday night, even cracking a joke on forced budget cuts along the way. 
 
 The annual event brings together politicians and Washington’s media elite. Because there’s limited press access, presidents who attend usually act a little looser than when the camera light is on. 
 
 
 
 This is the second time Obama has attended the dinner as president but the first since 2011. 
 
 “As you know, I last attended the Gridiron dinner two years ago. Back then, I addressed a number of topics - a dysfunctional Congress, a looming budget crisis, complaints that I don’t spend enough time with the press. It’s funny, it seems like it was just yesterday,” Obama said. 
 
 This year, the president said the jokes were a little harder to come by because of forced budget cuts and also talked of the notoriously long dinner. 
 
 “My joke writers have been placed on furlough,” Obama said. “Of course there is one thing in Washington that didn’t get cut: The length of this dinner. Yet more proof that the sequester makes no sense.” 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden wasn’t in attendance but his presence was still felt. Biden is rumored to be a potential presidential nominee in 2016 but Obama said he may have different aspirations. 
 
 “(The) vice president is still ambitious. But let's face it, his age is an issue. Just the other day, I had to take Joe aside and say, ‘Joe, you are way too young to be the pope,’” Obama said. 
 
 Obama even made light of Sen. Marco Rubio’s infamous water sip during the Republican response following the State of the Union address. 
 
 “Of course, as I begin my second term, our country is still facing enormous challenges,” the president said, taking a long sip of water. “That, Marco Rubio, is how you take a sip of water.” 
 
 The president also brought up his new Secretary of State, John Kerry, and compared him to his predecessor, the famously pantsuit-wearing Hillary Clinton. 
 
 “Let’s face it - Hillary is a tough act to follow. But John Kerry is doing great so far. He is doing everything he can to ensure continuity. Frankly, though, I think it’s time for him to stop showing up at work in pantsuits. It's a disturbing image,” Obama said. 
 
 Every president since 1885 except for Grover Cleveland has spoken at the 128-year-old organization’s dinner. 
 
 The Gridiron is a media organization bringing together the “who’s who” of the Washington press corps. About 650 people attended the dinner according to Gridiron and they included top politicians and journalists. There are 65 members of the Gridiron and membership is by invitation only. The group is a charitable organization and provides annual scholarships to colleges and journalistic organizations. 
 
 Despite being a media organization, the dinner is traditionally closed to the television press pool which typically covers the president. But a newspaper pool reporter was allowed into the dinner Saturday for the first time ever and provided updates to the media. The idea behind the limited media access is to allow both club members and politicians a chance to let their guards down and tell jokes they may not otherwise tell with cameras watching and listening. 
 
 Still, some have criticized the gathering both for the limited media access and for the perceived coziness between the press and politicians they have to report on. 
 
 Obama will be attending the larger White House Correspondents’ Dinner next month which does allow television media coverage. 
 
 The president ended tonight’s dinner on a serious note, thanking journalists for the work they do. 
 
 “In an age when all it takes to attract attention is a Twitter handle and some followers, it’s easier than ever to get it wrong. But it’s more important than ever to get it right. And I’m grateful for all the journalists who do one of the toughest jobs there is with integrity and insight and dedication and a sense of purpose that goes beyond a business model or a news cycle,” Obama said.
– It's not unusual for the peanut gallery to ask if a politician was drinking after a speech—or if that drink was Kool-Aid—but it's Marco Rubio's swig of water last night that's getting more attention than his words. While giving his party's response to the State of the Union, he was forced to dive far to the side to reach a bottle of water, Slate reports, thus creating a distraction from the speech and fueling extensive Twitter commentary. There were 9,200 tweets per minute just after the sip, Twitter says, and #watergate and Poland Spring became trending topics, USA Today reports. "Strong material but the trivial water bit will get endless attention. #LifeUnfair," tweeted a GOP strategist. Rubio himself has reacted to the snafu with good humor. Late last night he tweeted this photo of the Poland Spring bottle. "This tweet came straight from the boss. #staffisnotthisfunny," Rubio's research director added in a follow up tweet spotted by BuzzFeed. This morning, Rubio took a swig during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. "I needed water, what am I going to do, you know?" he said. "God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human."