Senator Marco Rubio fired back at the New York Times for excoriating him over his finances when the newspaper reported that the Republican candidate purchased a “luxury speedboat” for $80K. The paper added that Rubio  “. . .struggled under the weight of student debt, mortgages and an extra loan against the value of his home totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Rubio purchased the 24-foot boat in 2012 with $800,000 he received as an advance for a book deal.

Rubio’s campaign shot back at the smear campaign by stating that the senator currently carries a single debt — the mortgage on his home — and that he has paid off over $150,000 in student loans from his undergraduate and law school education.

Here is a picture of the boat model purchased by Rubio, an EdgeWater 245CC Deep-V Center Console. It’s a nice boat, to be sure, and boats in general are pretty pricey, but it’s hardly the “extravagant luxury speedboat” as the NYT described it. In fact, Dylan Byers at Politico found it to be a fishing boat.

You want an extravagant yacht? Here’s a lavish boat — worth $7 million dollars back in 2010. Sort of puts Rubio’s “luxury boat” to shame, doesn’t it?

Here’s a photo of the interior of the boat.

The proud owner of this most seaworthy vessel? Then-Senator John Kerry. In 2010 he chose to dock the Isabel in neighboring Rhode Island rather than his state of Massachusetts in order to avoid paying $500,000 in taxes to the Bay State.

The New York Times co-author of the hit piece on Marco Rubio, Michael Barbaro, may not know his boats. But he certainly knows luxury. He resides in a $1.1 million dollar apartment in New York.