David Hogg, a 17-year-old high school senior who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, exaggerated National Rifle Association donations during a speech Saturday in an attempt to slam Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.).
Hogg opened his "March For Our Lives" rally speech by signaling out the Florida senator and placing a bright orange $1.05 price tag on the lectern, a figure that he said represented how much Rubio "took for every student's life in Florida."
"First off, I'm going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student's life in Florida," Hogg said.
The $1.05 figure was calculated by taking the inflated figure on the "March For Our Lives" website and dividing it by the number of students enrolled in public and private schools in Florida.
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported on how media outlets were exaggerating the amount of money that Republicans had received, conflating independent expenditures and donations.
The NRA's PAC has donated only $9,900 directly to Rubio's campaign, all of which came during the 2016 cycle.
The NRA did spend $2.3 million on independent expenditures in Rubio's 2016 race targeting former Democratic representative Patrick Murphy and $1 million in favor of Rubio. However, independent expenditures, such as money put into advertisements, are not "donations" and cannot be coordinated with a candidate's campaign.
Independent expenditures are communications that advocate for or against candidates "that are not made in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidate's authorized committee, or their agents, or a political party or its agents."
Hogg, who has become a vocal gun-control activist since the school massacre, castigated the NRA and Republican politicians in an interview earlier this month, calling them "pathetic fuckers that want to keep killing our children."
Hogg is not the only teenager from Stoneman Douglas High School to attack Rubio. Cameron Kasky, a junior, told Rubio last month at the CNN town hall that he could not look at him "without looking down the barrel of an AR-15," referring to the weapon that the gunman used to kill 17 students and teachers.