Since the revolution of the late 1950s and Fidel Castro’s communist government, Cuba has been at odds with the United States. Successive presidents have come under fire for their handling of relations between the two countries, and for President Barack Obama it hasn’t been any different.
Over the course of the last few years, Obama has taken steps to normalize communications between the U.S. and Cuba, but not every move is welcomed by critics or from his allies. Here are 10 times Obama has been criticized for the way he's dealing with Cuba.
1. Sen. Marco Rubio, whose parents are from Cuba, took the president to task for removing Cuba from its list of countries supporting terrorism. The senator from Florida said the move "sends a chilling message to our enemies abroad that this White House is no longer serious about calling terrorism by its proper name."
Vote Now: Should the US End the Embargo Against Cuba?
2. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) said the Obama is administration is operating for political reasons only and called the move to remove Cuba from the list "nothing short of a miscarriage of justice borne out of political motivations not rooted in reality."
3. Criticism wasn’t limited to the Republican side of the stage with the president coming under fire from
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey). Menendez agreed with Republicans on their stance with regards to Cuba, saying in a statement, “It is a fallacy that Cuba will reform just because the American president believes that if he extends his hand in peace, that the Castro brothers suddenly will unclench their fists.”
4. Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush also made a statement about his dislike of Obama’s move, saying it "undermines the quest for a free and democratic Cuba."
5. Another Republican presidential hopeful for 2016, Texas
Sen. Ted Cruz was highly critical of Obama’s course of action on Cuba. "Cuba must prove it is willing to change its behavior before the United States takes a single action to remove it from the list of state sponsors of terror," he said in a statement.
6. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican in the House of Representatives and also from Florida, is angry with Obama for removing Cuba from the terrorism list while getting little in return. "It's pretty clear that people don't want to just give up all leverage, all sanctions, getting nothing in return for the United States," he said,
according to USA Today.
7. Sen. Mark Kirk, the Republican senator from Obama’s home state of Illinois, took to the press in his condemnation of the president’s moves on Cuba.
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirk is quoted as saying, “It’s stunning that the White House is willing to change U.S. policy so fundamentally before first seeing any fundamental change in the nature of the Cuban regime."
Vote Now: Do You Approve or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance?
8. Karl Rove, the former Bush administration operative, told Fox News' "Happening Now" of his displeasure with the Obama moves on Cuba and called it "a very bad signal to our adversaries around the world."
9. Conservative radio host
Rush Limbaugh has long been a critic of the Obama administration and in a recent broadcast of his radio show condemned the plan to remove Cuba from the list of countries supporting terrorism, saying that the U.S. is "going to use taxpayer dollars to prop up another communist dictatorship in our hemisphere, 90 miles away."
10. John Bolton, a contributor to Fox News and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is very skeptical of the policy by the administration and told an edition of "Happening Now" that the moves are a "very, very bad signal of weakness and lack of resolve by the President of the United States."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.