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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Spicer & Co. on Newsmax to discuss the historic, ongoing protests in Cuba and the evils of socialism. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here. 

On the Cuban government and Marxism:
 
“Here’s the fundamental point that people have to understand: for example, the embargo and the Trump policies – which sharpened the embargo – don’t cover telecommunications. The reason why there isn’t Sprint, AT&T, and all these other companies in Cuba. It is because the Cuban regime doesn’t allow it. It’s the Cuban regime that doesn’t allow a Cuban farmer to sell food to people or a fisherman to sell fish. It’s the Cuban regime that doesn’t allow a Cuban to own a small, independent business that we could freely commerce with. It’s the Cuban regime that takes ten percent of all the dollars that relatives send to their families in Cuba, then forces Cubans to convert the remaining dollars into a worthless local currency and keeps the dollars in their own pocket for themselves. 
 
“So there is no embargo on the Cuban people. If the Cuban people were allowed to freely commerce and open independent businesses, they could do so. The only embargo is on companies that are owned and controlled by the Cuban military – they just happen to own everything, because they are Marxist, because they are socialists, and because Marxism is about control. It isn’t about prosperity, it isn’t about security, and it isn’t about being better off: it’s about dividing people and controlling them.”
 
On the Obama Administration’s posture toward Cuba:
 
“I think [the Obama Administration] emboldened them. But more importantly, here’s the impact that it had: it actually opened some people’s eyes, including people on the island of Cuba because they saw, ‘OK, here’s the United States allowing this, that, and the other…’ And what people don’t understand is we can decide to open up all that we want, it’s the Cuban regime that decides how much of that opening they allow in. So they said, ‘thank you for sending us tourists in the Obama opening, they have to go to the hotels that we control and that we own. Thank you for allowing more money to be sent to family members, we’re going to take a ten percent cut, and then we’re going to force it to become local currency so we can keep the dollars for ourselves and use it four our stockpile and for our purchases.’ So, I think what was learned from the opening is they control how much of that opening reaches the Cuban people… 
 
“That regime cannot allow the Cuban people to have prosperity, they cannot allow an opening to benefit the Cuban people, because the day the Cuban people can provide food for their own families and not rely on the government, they lose control over them. That’s why the people on the street aren’t chanting for the end of the embargo, they’re chanting “libertad” which means liberty. They know this is all lies, and they want an end to it.”  
 
On the evils of socialism and Marxism: 
 
“I was born and raised in this country, and I understand that after three, four, five generations of being here, the only thing you know about socialism is that it’s an interesting theory they talk about in school, and why can’t we have a county where everything is free and people have all these things provided for them. 
 
“But when you live and grow up where I grew up, surrounded by people not just from Cuba – Nicaragua, now Venezuela, whose lives have been destroyed by socialism, whose families have been divided, then you recognize the signs of this even before it fully develops. And so when you hear, for example, people talk about, ‘there’s an oppressor class, and a victim class, you must give us power, and some of your freedom, so that we can empower the victims and go after the oppressor class,’…  when they hear that, they hear Marxism. Because that’s exactly what Marxism says. It divides people into the capitalist class, the workers, you name it. 
“Whether it’s identity politics here, or that over there, Marxism divides people, and then it pits them against each other, and then it says, ‘only government can solve it, give us the power, give us your freedom, and we’ll provide security.’ You never get the security, and you never get your freedom back either.”
 
On how the United States can help the people of Cuba: 
 
“The first is that we can provide, in the short-term, access to VPN technology; in the long-term, some satellite form of internet so the people of Cuba can communicate with themselves and the outside world openly. 
 
“Right now the internet is shut down in Cuba, it’s very intermittent, I keep getting videos throughout the day, but it’s people that hit a hotspot somewhere near a hotel, they send it, but they’ve shut all that down. 
 
“But we should call the Cuban regime’s bluff! Here’s the bottom line: we will provide humanitarian assistance, we will provide vaccines, but it has to be distributed by the Red Cross or some non-governmental organization, not by the regime. They’ll turn it down – they already have. And you know why? A, because it’s embarrassing to them that they can’t provide for themselves and provide these things even though they talk about having a world-class healthcare system. But the other is they don’t want the vaccine for the people, they want vaccines for control. What they want to be able to do is say, ‘OK, if you’re compliant, if you don’t complain, or if you’re a loyal member of the Communist Party, you and your family get a vaccine. If you’re not, you don’t get a vaccine.’ They use everything like that: access to education, access to money, access to food, travel benefits. All of these things they use as a weapon to control people into compliance. That’s why they won’t allow it.”