Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t taking charges leveled in a recent Washington Post article lightly. The Post suggested that Rubio “embellished” details about his parents being Cuban exiles, something he says is untrue.
On Friday’s “Studio B” on the Fox News Channel, fill-in host Trace Gallagher asked the senator to discuss the story. Rubio said that despite mistaking certain dates, the fact remains that his parents were technically “exiles.”
“I think it’s outrageous,” Rubio said. “I don’t walk around with my parents’ passports in my pocket. They’re right I got the dates wrong, but the essence of the story does not need to be embellished.”
“My parents were exiled,” he continued. “When I was born in May of 1971, I was born to two people who could not return to the nation of their birth because it was under Communist control. And they tried to return by the way in 1961 and when they did, they realized what they were dealing with and came back permanently.”
Rubio argued that Cubans who moved to the United States prior to Fidel Castro’s revolution, to escape the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, remain exiles because of the current government.
“There were a lot of Cubans living in the United States because they were not happy with the Batista regime to begin with. Are they now not exiles because Fidel Castro took over?” Rubio asked.
To further support his characterization of his parents as exiles, Rubio said, “My parents did try to return in 1961 and my mom moved back to Cuba. And she lived there for four weeks then she realized it was communist and came back to the United States just weeks before the Bay of Pigs. So, there is in need to embellish that.”
Gallagher offered support for Rubio, noting that in the past he said that his parents arrived in the United States prior to Castro seizing power in Cuba.
“In fairness we should point out that we have checked and you have said many times that your parents came to this country before Castro took power in Cuba,” Gallagher said.
Watch:
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