Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., lashed out at President Biden on Monday for his response to mass protests that broke out in Cuba a day earlier.
"I don't know why it's so hard for them to criticize Marxists," Rubio said of the Biden administration in an appearance on "Hannity."
CUBAN PRESIDENT URGES COUNTRY'S ‘REVOLUTIONARY’ CITIZENS TO COUNTER PROTESTS
The Biden State Department initially tied the historic protests in Cuba to COVID-19 concerns rather than the country’s communist government. Rubio slammed that charge – as well as the president’s silence over the weekend – as a "major failure."
Biden "left out the word Marxist and communist and socialist," when assigning blame, Rubio said.
"What you just described, the murderous nature of the Castro regime, that's the way every Marxist regime has ever been, always, because Marxism and socialism is built on this….you go to a people and you say 'there's this group of good, noble people and there's this group of oppressors that are trying to destroy them. Give us the power to crush the oppressors…' but the price of that of course is your freedom so they win and then what happens? You don't get those things and you don't get your freedom back and then if you complain about it they crack your head open, they put you in jail, they exile you, or they kill you," an outraged Rubio went on.
"And that's what's happening. And that's what happens everywhere all the time. Socialism is about control, about controlling people and every aspect of their lives."
DEM SOCIALISTS MUM ON CUBA PROTESTS
Protesters demanded freedom and are calling for the disbandment of the country’s communist dictatorship as the country goes through its worst economic crisis in decades, along with a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki sought Monday to frame the protests being driven by far broader frustration, calling the demonstrations "spontaneous expressions of people who are exhausted with the Cuban government’s economic mismanagement and repression."
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Rubio said the administration must "make it very clear whose side we are on."
"The passion you see in the streets of Miami tonight and in other parts of Florida and the country are people that suffered under that evil, saw their families divided, their lives destroyed, their kids have to go overseas, people never saw their parents before they died because of this evil," he said.
"That's what Marxism is and I wish we had a president and more leaders in Congress on the Democratic side of the aisle…willing to say that."