Last week, I was doing some research on Cuba, when I ran across the most hilarious piece of propaganda from Granma, the official Cuban Communist Party paper. The article’s headline read, “The mythomaniac Marco Rubio,” with a subhead that stated, “The U.S. Secretary of State epitomizes the moral crisis of the empire’s elites.” It was accompanied by a cartoon version of Rubio looking evil and hiding behind a United States flag — like something out of an old Cold War classroom filmstrip.
“Marco Rubio, an American of Cuban descent and Secretary of State of the United States, has been characterized throughout his political career by a lack of ethics, corruption scandals, extreme mythomania, far-right positions, and his unhealthy obsession with overthrowing progressive and sovereign nations in Latin America, mainly Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, as well as the current governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico,” the article begins.
I won’t rehash the whole thing, but it sounds like the set-up for a Marvel villain origin story… if the writers were commies who just lost their Venezuelan oil lifeline. It goes on to make accusations like *gasp* Rubio supports the NRA and Israel. In other words, change the hammer and sickle for a donkey, and it may as well be a DNC press release that took a Cuban detour on its way to MSNBC.
But it comes as no surprise. Rubio has been the bane of the Cuban regime’s existence since he first began his political career, and it’s been taking shots back at him ever since. Now that he’s secretary of state, has Donald Trump’s ear, and, let’s face it, shapes and executes the president’s strong Western Hemisphere foreign policy and national security plans, the rhetoric, accusations, and lies have only gotten louder.
They also have a common theme. Earlier this year, when Rubio placed visa restrictions on Cuba’s slave-like forced labor program, Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, came out swinging, claiming, “Once again, Marco Rubio puts his personal agenda before the U.S. interests.”
In October, Rodríguez sat down for an interview with the Associated Press and said that when Trump took office, the Cuban regime was pleased, thinking that it could actually work with the White House, but, again, Rubio’s “personal agenda” was preventing that. “The current secretary of state was not born in Cuba, has never been to Cuba, and knows nothing about Cuba,” he said. “But there is a very personal and corrupt agenda that he is carrying out, which seems to be sacrificing the national interests of the U.S. in order to advance this very extremist approach.”
In November, Rodríguez condemned Rubio, not Trump, for the U.S. actions against the Venezuelan regime with a post on X that read in part, “We denounce the lies of the U.S. Department of State pf the United States that, under the leadership of the corrupt and compulsive liar Secretary of State, attempt to justify with false pretexts the military aggression against Venezuela.”
That’s when Rubio famously responded with a clown gif.
https://t.co/XJel3YZ3VV pic.twitter.com/qUgIV590Yp
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 18, 2025
In December, Johana Tablada de la Torre, deputy director general of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused Rubio of trying to “impose his personal agenda again” and claimed that United States policy regarding Latin America was based on his “lies, irresponsible and crazy plans, without guarantees of success.”
They aren’t necessarily wrong about some of this. For Rubio, it is personal.
The communism that has plagued Cuba for decades deeply impacted the lives of his parents and grandparents. In his book An American Son, he details some of that, including how his parents came to the United States, seeking a better life. It had such a profound impact on his childhood that he once told his grandfather that he would someday “lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba.”
But the idea that it’s personal doesn’t delegitimize it because Rubio’s story isn’t unique. It’s personal for millions of Cuban exiles and their children and grandchildren. It’s personal for Cubans who still live on the island and lack access to food and basic necessities and who go hours without power. It’s personal for the people who have fled the other dictatorships in the region or are still forced to live under them.
Where Rubio’s story becomes unique is that during his time in the Senate, he built a career around all of it. He learned, he studied, he traveled, he met with other exiles and their families, and he pushed for sanctions, created policy that favored the people over the regimes, championed human rights, and connected all the dots that got us to where we are today.
Despite Trump — and everyone else — joking about it on social media, he probably won’t become president of a free Cuba as he dreamed about as a child, but he will likely overthrow what’s left the of Castro regime and have a major say in what happens next. Donald Trump will get the credit, of course, and he should, but there has never been any doubt in my mind that Rubio is the architect.
From day one of the Trump administration, Rubio’s fingerprints have been all over the president’s foreign policy and increasingly so as the past year has progressed. I hear it in the way the president talks. When he speaks to the press about the countries south of our border, in the Caribbean and Latin America, I hear Rubio’s words coming from his mouth. When the Trump administration takes quiet actions — the ones that don’t always make the headlines — I see years of Rubio’s historic work in action.
The first trip Rubio took after he was confirmed as secretary was to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. I remember the night I saw the almost cinematic pictures of him and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele casually walking amongst the country’s lush green backdrop and thinking this moment means something. Rubio is going to focus on the Western Hemisphere, and he’s going to bring a much needed change that will go a long way toward solving many of our problems here in the United States and in those other countries — problems like organized crime, mass migration, ties to China, and what’s left of the hemisphere’s socialist bloc. At the time, I had no idea how big that change would be, but I knew U.S. policy would change.
Now, I know history will be made. It already has been with the capture and arrest of Nicolás Maduro, and now the hemispheric dominoes are falling. Cuba is backed into a corner. Colombia’s defiant and mouthy Gustavo Petro admits he has no future without Trump. Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum has changed her tune, and I suspect she will even more in the days to come. Even better, our adversaries elsewhere are in a panic.
In his book, Rubio a lifelong football fan, said he played Pop Warner as a kid. One year, he played quarterback, but the next year he was moved to defense, something he said he wasn’t happy about. He said his dad suggested that the coaches were favoring their own kids. “In truth, I wasn’t a very good quarterback and never would be,” he wrote.
Turns out, that’s not necessarily true.
The Associated Press came out with a football metaphor-heavy article last week entitled, “Venezuela helps vault Rubio to quarterback of Trump’s foreign policy team.”
I’m glad everyone else is catching on, but I’d argue that Rubio has probably been the quarterback all along, or, at least, for quite a while now. Even the Cuban regime has that figured out —that’s why it focuses and has even turned up its rhetoric and propaganda in recent months. Dictators don’t turn people who aren’t a threat into supervillain caricatures. They do it when they know that person runs the team and threatens their existence… when that person is the quarterback.
Rubio may not be playing for his beloved Miami Dolphins, but he’s playing for stakes that are much higher than a Super Bowl. He’s giving hope to nearly every Venezuelan and Cuban in this world, and he’s solving many problems for every U.S. citizen.
Thankfully, he’s teamed up with the head coach who is bold enough and who trusts him enough to see it through.
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