Secretary of State Marco Rubio filled in as press secretary at the White House on Tuesday, as Karoline Leavitt is out on maternity leave. During his appearance in the briefing room, he criticized “incompetent” communists in Cuba, and called on the United Nations to condemn Iran amid its actions in the Middle East.
Rubio was asked how long a fuel embargo on Cuba would last, to which he replied, “there’s no oil blockage on Cuba, per se. Here’s what’s happening with Cuba. Cuba used to get free oil from Venezuela, used to give them a bunch of free oil. They would take like 60 percent of that oil and resell it for cash. It wouldn’t even go to benefit the people.”
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, continued, “So the only blockade that’s happened is the Venezuelans have decided, we’re not giving you free oil anymore. And you can only imagine nowadays the way oil prices are, no one’s giving away free oil, much less to a failed regime.”
He said Cuba’s economic model “doesn’t work, and the people who are in charge can’t fix it. And the reason they can’t fix it is not just because they’re communists, that’s bad enough, but they’re incompetent communists. The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent one.”
Speaking on a resolution being brought before the United Nations, Rubio said it would be a “real test” for the international body. “What is the purpose of the UN? The UN was supposed to be a place where you could peacefully resolve global conflict. Right now you have a country who is unlawfully, criminally, and illegally taking possession of an international waterway and blowing up commercial vessels and putting mines in the water. I don’t know if people appreciate, like, how outrageous this is, how unacceptable it is that any country would fire and try to sink commercial vessels or put mines in the water.”
He said, “we’re not even asking people, like commit troops to the region and help blow up the Iranians, all we’re asking them to do is to condemn it, to call on Iran to stop blowing up ships, to remove these mines and to allow humanitarian relief to come through.”
The United States drafted the UN Security Council Resolution alongside Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar.
