Marco Rubio critiques Castro condolences from President Obama and Pope Francis

Marco Rubio speaks with CNN
(Image credit: CNN/Screenshot)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday criticized President Obama and Pope Francis for their responses to the death of former Cuban President Fidel Castro. He first went after Obama with a tweet on Saturday, calling Obama's statement "pathetic" because the president focused on improved U.S.-Cuba relations and said history will judge Castro's record rather than providing a critique of his own.

The Cuban-American senator doubled down on that point in a CNN interview Sunday morning, castigating Obama for failing to mention "the reality that there are thousands upon thousands of people who suffered brutally under the Castro regime. He executed people, he jailed people for 20 to 30 years, the Florida straits — there are thousands of people who lost their lives fleeing his dictatorship."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.