Marco Rubio On Obama, Castro Handshake: He Should've Used The Moment To Talk Freedom In Cuba

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and Cuban-American who has long staked out a hardline position against the Communist Party leadership which has remained in power since the 1959 revolution, told ABC News on Tuesday that he was less worried about President Barack Obama's brief handshake with Cuban President Raul Castro than US-Cuba policy. "I'm more focused on policy than some moment," he told the network. "But if he was going to be there and shake his hand, he should have asked him about those basic freedoms that Mandela is associated with that are systematically denied in Cuba."

"My biggest problem," added the senator, "is not the handshake." Rubio's anti-Castro stance may have won him support among both Tea Party voters - with whom he has been a favorite for the 2016 presidency - and the older South Florida Cuban Americans who have traditionally been staunch opponents of the island nation's government. The senator may even have altered his family's history to emphasize his opposition to the Castro brothers, telling audiences during his rise to prominence that he was the "son of exiles" who were driven from their homes when "a thug", Fidel Castro, led the revolutionary army into Havana in 1959. His Senate website bio also long said that they "came to America following Fidel Castro's takeover." In reality, Rubio's parents came to the United States well before Castro's revolution - two and a half years before New Year's Day 1959, they were already permanent residents in the US.

Rubio's website has since been changed to read that the senator "was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban exiles who first arrived in the United States in 1956." Earlier this year, he said that despite some liberalizing reforms enacted in Cuba which allow for greater economic freedoms as well as others making it easier for Cubans to travel abroad, it "remains clear that Cuba is the same totalitarian state today that it has been for decades," adding, "This totalitarian state continues to have close ties to terrorist organizations." He has also said that he favors tighter restrictions over Cuban-Americans' travel to the island, saying that frequent trips belie the point of the refugee status granted those who reach United States soil.

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