Washington D.C. — Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has publicly taken sole credit for Cuba policy under Trump — and Biden.

In an exclusive interview with Telemundo 51 earlier this month, Rubio told reporter Marilys Llanos that “directly designing U.S. policy toward Cuba under Trump, which is still in effect,” was among his most significant accomplishments in the U.S. Senate over the past six years.

It’s been well-documented that Rubio was the driving force behind Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy toward Cuba.

Trump White House officials themselves have described Rubio as “central” to crafting Trump’s Cuba policy, which not only put a halt to the historic detente initiated in the last two years of the Obama administration, but went even further, advancing a bellicose policy that hearkened back to Cold War levels of aggression.

In less than two years, Trump went from exploring investment opportunities on the island to waging an economic war aimed at regime change.

Once an object of scorn for Trump (Remember “Little Marco”?), Rubio became a major Senate ally to the former president. Trump reportedly allowed Rubio, dubbed the “shadow Secretary of State for Latin America,” to handpick an entourage of Cuban-American hardliners for key positions in his administration.

Chief among them was Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former pro-embargo lobbyist, who served as Rubio’s proxy within the administration, imposing policy directives as Trump’s top White House official on Latin America.

Claver-Carone oversaw the implementation of a barrage of sanctions and other coercive measures (the Cuban government enumerated 243 in total) in the fields of tourism, travel, trade, finance, energy and industry. The policies caused, together with the impact of COVID, an economic implosion (Cuba’s GDP contracted 11% in 2020).

Rubio no longer holds the reins of Latin America policy (Claver-Carone is gone, controversially appointed to a plum position as head of the Inter-American Development Bank where he has since been fired by its board of directors over ethics violations), but his boast that he is responsible for Biden’s Cuba policy is not without merit.

While Biden has re-opened consular services at the U.S. embassy in Havana and loosened some travel restrictions, his Cuba policy remains largely indistinguishable from that of his predecessor. The U.S. government’s economic war against Cuba, under Trump and now Biden, has had a devastating impact on the island, which is facing scarcities of food, fuel and medicine and its worst migration crisis in thirty years.

Rubio’s self-praise about his Cuba policy comes at a precarious moment in his political career. Once a heavy favorite to be re-elected in the November midterms, Rubio is now running neck and neck with Democratic contender Rep. Val Demings (D-FL). As the race has tightened, Rubio has sought to boost campaign contributions by stepping up his anti-communist rhetoric, labeling Demings’ liberal supporters “far-left Marxists."

Last month, Rubio called for an FBI investigation into a group of Cuban Americans and local Miami activists called Puentes de Amor (“Bridges of Love”), which has led demonstrations against Trump’s sanctions in cities across the United States over the past two years. Rubio alleged that the group’s leader, Carlos Lazo, is an unregistered agent of the Cuban government, providing no evidence except that Lazo has met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and regularly travels to Cuba.