Marco Rubio: ‘Jay-Z Needs To Get Informed’

Marco Rubio didn’t take too kindly to rapper Jay-Z making making what he called an illegal trip to Cuba and wearing a shirt with an image of Che Guevara on it.

Rubio, a Senator from Florida of Cuban descent, was sounding off on the rapper’s recent trip to Cuba with his wife Beyonce, one that would have needed approval from the State Department to take place.

Speaking on ABC News’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Marco Rubio said Jay-Z appears to be mistaken about who Che Guevara really was.

“I mean, first of all, I think Jay-Z needs to get informed. One of his heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist,” Rubio said. “Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he’s propping up.”

Rubio had already sounded off on Jay-Z’s trip to Cuba, calling it illegal and demanding an investigation.

Other Cuban-American members of Congress questioned the legality of the couple’s trip, writing a formal letter. Rep. Ileansa Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, both Republicans from Florida, sent the letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department.

The representatives asked about Jay-Z and Beyonce’s trip to Cuba, noting that there’s been an embargo on American tourism there since the 1960s.

Rubio said he would like to see stricter travel regulations to Cuba.

“The bigger point is the travel policies. The travel policies need to be tightened because they are being abused. These are tourist trips, and they are – what they’re doing is providing hard currency and funding so that a tyrannical regime can maintain its grip on the island of Cuba, and I think that’s wrong,” he said.

Marco Rubio added that Jay-Z missed a golden opportunity to truly help Cuba.

[Image by Gage Skidmore [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons]