Marco Rubio says Rand Paul "has no idea what he's talking about" on Cuba
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, responded with a series of Tweets at Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who said Thursday evening that Paul didn't know what he was talking about on the topic of Cuba.
Hey @marcorubio if the embargo doesn't hurt Cuba, why do you want to keep it?
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) December 19, 2014
The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. So @marcorubio why not Cuba?
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) December 19, 2014
Senator @marcorubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) December 19, 2014
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, had said his Kentucky colleague Sen. Rand Paul "like many people who have been opining, has no idea what he's talking about."
Paul was the first of the major potential Republican presidential candidates to say anything positive about the President's move toward normalizing relations with Cuba. In an interview Thursday with WVHU, he said that he thought "opening up Cuba is probably a good idea." Paul feels the five-decade embargo against Cuba "just hasn't worked," and "probably, it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship."
Rubio, who was interviewed on "The Kelly File" on Fox News, agreed that the embargo is imperfect, saying it "quite frankly has a bunch of holes in it," but he went on to say that "the embargo is not what's hurting people--it's the lack of freedom and the lack of competent leaders."