Marco Rubio critiques Castro condolences from President Obama and Pope Francis


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."
Rubio also registered his disagreement with Pope Francis' expression of sorrow over Castro's death, noting that as a practicing Catholic, he accepts Vatican authority on matters of theology, not politics. Watch his comments below. Bonnie Kristian
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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.
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