State Department’s claim that Trump said Marco Rubio is from Cuba sparks confusion

WASHINGTON, DC: A social media post from the Department of State went viral for incorrectly suggesting that President Donald Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was from Cuba while speaking about the administration’s increasing focus on the island country.

The post, published on the State Department’s official X (formerly Twitter) account on Wednesday, May 20, included a clip of Trump speaking about Cuba and Rubio’s role in shaping policy toward the communist-led country.

State Department's confusing post on Trump's remarks about Marco Rubio

The post included a video of the president answering a reporter’s question about his administration’s stance on Cuba, followed by a short transcript of Trump’s response.

“PRESIDENT TRUMP: We have a lot of people in Cuba. We have the CIA there. @SecRubio is from there, so we have a lot of expertise,” the written text of the post read. “We’re going to help the Cuban people out. We’re freeing up Cuba.”

Rubio is not from Cuba. He was born in Miami, Florida, to Cuban immigrants.

Yet oddly, Trump did not claim in the video attached to the post that his secretary of state was from Cuba. The president’s actual remarks were correct in noting that Rubio’s parents were born in Cuba, not their son.

The online mix-up quickly became a talking point across political and media circles because Rubio’s Cuban heritage has become increasingly central to the administration’s strategy toward Havana.

Rubio, one of the highest-profile Cuban-American politicians in the country, has played a major role in the administration’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Cuba.

The Republican leader has also spoken publicly about helping “free” the Cuban people and previously floated the possibility of a “friendly takeover” as the island’s economic crisis worsened.

Marci Rubio addresses Cubans directly amid escalating tensions

The controversy surrounding the State Department post arrived during a period of rapidly escalating tensions between Washington and Havana.

The administration’s pressure campaign against Cuba has expanded significantly in recent months following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and increased US efforts to weaken Cuba’s communist government economically and diplomatically.

On the same day the State Department’s post went up, Rubio posted a five-minute video addressing the Cuban people, in which he spoke only in Spanish.

The secretary discussed the blockade on the country, claiming it was the Cuban government and not US action that was causing hardship for the country’s people.

“The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not because of an oil ‘blockade’ by the United States,” Rubio said. “The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food, is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”

Hours after that post, the Department of Justice indicted former Cuban President Raul Castro for the alleged murder of American citizens in relation to the downing of two planes near the Cuban coast in 1996.

The indictment marked one of the most dramatic escalations in US-Cuba relations in years and reinforced how central Cuba has become to the Trump administration’s broader foreign policy agenda in Latin America.