Lula Unleashes Personal Attack on Rubio, Calling Him a Frustrated Cuban Who Hates Brazil
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is having a public meltdown over U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In a recent speech caught on video, Lula went after the American official by name, tying him to the political opposition at home and attacking his family background.
“Marcos met about four or five times with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. But he has a citizen who doesn’t like Brazil, who doesn’t like Latin America, and who is a Bolsonarista, who is the Secretary of State man, who is Marco Rubio,” Lula said
He continued: “He doesn’t like [us]. I told Trump, this young man doesn’t like Brazil. He doesn’t like it, he is an anti-Latin American, or a frustrated Latin American, because he left Cuba, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, whatever, he never lived in Cuba. But he left, he is a descendant of a Cuban from Miami. So he hates, hates Cuba, hates Colombia, hates Brazil, and he does things differently from what we talk about with Trump.”
This is not diplomacy. It is a personal smear from a leftist leader who has spent years cozying up to authoritarian regimes while lecturing others about democracy. Rubio’s real offense is clear: he has pushed back on Lula’s government, including through tariffs and by allowing entry for members of the Bolsonaro family after their electoral defeat. Lula treats opposition to his policies as hatred of the entire continent.
Calling Rubio a “frustrated Latin American” or anti-Latin American because of his Cuban roots is especially revealing. Cuban-Americans in Miami largely fled a communist dictatorship that destroyed their country. Many oppose the same brand of left-wing authoritarianism Lula has aligned with across the region. That is not frustration; it is experience. Lula’s rant treats that history as a character flaw rather than a warning.
The timing adds to the picture. Rubio recently hosted a G20 foreign ministers meeting in Atlanta where he briefly spoke with Brazil’s foreign minister amid ongoing tensions over the recent Brazilian election and related visa issues. Instead of addressing policy differences directly, Lula resorts to ethnic-style attacks and labels. Strong U.S. leadership that refuses to rubber-stamp leftist governments in the hemisphere is being recast as bigotry.
Lula’s comments show the limits of his approach. When negotiations with Washington do not go his way, he blames individuals and their backgrounds instead of examining his own government’s record on trade, governance, and regional alliances. Rubio, by contrast, is simply doing the job of representing American interests against governments that have repeatedly failed their own people.- DTP