The Washington Post’s story on Marco Rubio’s supposed “embellishment” of his family history was so thin that I almost didn’t want to comment on it. The story basically goes like this: Rubio’s parents came to the states more than three years before the communists took power, whereas Rubio has claimed they fled Castro.
The biggest problem with this story is that Rubio never claimed that his parents left at the barrel of a gun. There are no quotes from him saying any such thing.
Recommended Stories
At one point, Rubio said his parents came to the U.S. in 1959, which would have suggested they fled after Castro took power. But at another point, in an interview with Sean Hannity, he said they came in 1958 or 1959, which could have been either before or after Castro took power. And either way, the historical record, now dutifully exposed, shows that they returned in 1961 (hoping to stay in Cuba, Rubio reports) but left before Castro declared Cuba a Bolshevik State and destroyed its once-prosperous economy.
The end result is that the Post published a report (by an anti-Catholic, pro-Castro reporter) that is basically full of it, with no “there there.” The Miami Herald’s takedown of the piece is devastating.
So that’s one angle to all of this. Another one, I offer for every American out there who is neither an immigrant nor a descendant of the inhabitants of the original 13 Colonies. It’s no big secret that a lot of us have pretty sketchy ideas about our families’ past.
It’s your own family — you feel pretty confident talking about it, even if you haven’t done the document research you would do if, say, writing about someone else. Right? But are you sure any of it is true? Have you conducted document research? Exactly.
