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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Fox and Friends to discuss the Biden Administration’s negligent response to the push for freedom in Cuba and his plan to prevent the Democratic Party from using Big Tech to silence free speech. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here.
On the Biden Administration’s response to the protests in Cuba:
“This is not a priority for the Biden White House, and there’s two reasons for it. One is because there are people in the State Department and others who are arguing, ‘Look, let’s not have any instability in Cuba right now. We don’t need the regime to fall because we don’t want another crisis to deal with.’ That’s the best case.
“At worst is you have people that are flat-out sympathizers of elements of that regime. Members of Congress for years have traveled to Havana, met with officials, groveled with them — they’ve got people in the White House, at the National Security Council, and in the State Department who are some of the biggest proponents of engagement with the regime. They were the biggest supporters; some helped craft the Obama deal with the Cuban regime.
“And then you’ve got people in the base of the Democratic Party that are flat-out Marxists — there are Marxists in the Democratic base in terms of the people that knock on doors, the people that raise all the small dollar donors and so forth — so that creates a huge division for them internally. They want this thing to go away — but it’s not going to go away, and we’re not going to let it go away.”
On Republican legislators’ request for a meeting with President Joe Biden regarding Cuba:
“I don’t know if we are going to get that meeting. It’s the President, I know he’s got a busy schedule and everything, but I think this is an important issue. If this is a priority, you figure out a way to have a meeting. And look, if there is anything that should be bipartisan it’s foreign policy, and something like this — taking on Marxism, socialism, an anti-American dictatorship 90 miles from our shores — that should be bipartisan, but right now it’s not. I hope that can change.”
On the Democratic Party’s efforts to use Big Tech to silence their critics:
“When you see [Democrats] rail against Big Tech, what they’re railing against is that Big Tech will not silence certain voices and certain opinions. That’s what they are talking about. These are private businesses, but never in the history of our country have we had such a small number of companies, of individuals — unelected, unaccountable, with no due process — making such decisions about who has access to the public square.
“And so I’m filing a bill that requires Big Tech companies to disclose any time a government anywhere in the world, including here in America, asks them or pressures them to take down content. They need to disclose that.
…
“It really comes down to five or six companies. If these five or six companies — Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter — all get together and decide [that they] will shut somebody down, they can wipe you out. They can deny you access to the internet; they can deny you access to the most prevalent social media sites in the world.
“And then you add to that the growing one, TikTok, which is owned by Bytedance, which is a Chinese company that, by the way, was taking down anti-Cuba regime videos at an amazing clip because they are a communist government over there.
“So it’s a very concerning thing. They are monopolies, but it’s not just an economic monopoly; it is a cultural, social, political monopoly.
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“Look, here’s what free speech means: free speech means people have the right to say things that are offensive, and they have the right to say things that are wrong, and they have the right to say things that are crazy. You can’t incite violence but, by the way, the Cuban regime is inciting violence — they didn’t take down the fake president of Cuba.”