Marco Rubio: Explain Beyonce and Jay-Z's Cuba trip

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By KEVIN CIRILLI | 4/9/13 6:45 AM EDT

Sen. Marco Rubio says the Cuban government used celebrity couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s recent trip to the country for “propaganda purposes,” and the Florida Republican wants answers from the White House.
“According to recent news reports, Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s Cuba trip, which the regime seized on for propaganda purposes, was fully licensed by the Treasury Department,” Rubio said in a public statement on Monday. “If true, the Obama administration should explain exactly how trips like these comply with U.S. law and regulations governing travel to Cuba and it should disclose how many more of these trips they have licensed.”
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W.H. on Beyonce Cuba trip: Talk to the Treasury

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Reuters reported Monday that the Treasury Department licensed the trip.

(PHOTOS: Beyoncé and Jay-Z in Cuba)
Rubio said that U.S. law bans American tourism to Cuba because it helps fund a “cruel, repressive and murderous regime.”
“U.S. law clearly bans tourism to Cuba by American citizens because it provides money to a cruel, repressive and murderous regime,” Rubio said in the statement. “Since their inception, the Obama administration’s ‘people to people’ cultural exchange programs have been abused by tourists who have no interest in the Cuban people’s freedom and either don’t realize or don’t care that they’re essentially funding the regime’s systematic trampling of people’s human rights.”
Rubio is not the first lawmaker to question the trip. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) sent a letter on Friday to the Treasury Department, wanting more information about the vacation, which coincided with the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary.
(PHOTOS: Celebs and their D.C. pet causes)
“We write to express concern and to request information regarding the highly publicized trip by U.S. musicians Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (Beyoncé) and Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) to Cuba,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
On Monday, Rubio tweeted that the couple should have met with imprisoned rapper Ángel Yunier Remón Arzuaga from the hip-hop duo Los Hijos Que Nadie Quiso (The Unwanted Children), who was imprisoned last month for rapping anti-government lyrics.

If interested in what life really like in #Cuba @s_c_should have visited persecuted rapper #AngelYunierRemon #99problems&dictatorsareone
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) April 8, 2013