FILE PHOTO: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as he speaks to the press before his departure following a G7 Foreign Ministers' meeting with Partner Countries before his departure at the Bourget airport in Le Bourget, outside Paris, France, March 27, 2026. Brendan Smialowski/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Someone at the State Department appeared to make an unforced error this week.
The department posted a video to X on Wednesday of President Donald Trump answering reporters' questions about the administration's increasingly aggressive stance toward Cuba.
But The Daily Beast noted that the person who wrote the accompanying transcript made a humiliating error.
"[Rubio] is from there, so we have a lot of expertise," the transcript read, implying that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is Cuban-born.
Rubio was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents who left the island before Castro took power, making him the American-born son of Cuban immigrants, a biographical fact he has repeated thousands of times.
The clip clearly shows Trump stating, "Marco is there, Marco's parents, as you know, were from Cuba."
The gaffe comes as the Trump administration escalates its campaign against Havana, with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing the indictment of former Cuban president Raúl Castro for conspiring to kill U.S. nationals in a 1996 attack that killed four Cuban-American exiles.