--- title: Donald Trump and the Truth About Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba description: Lee Harvey Oswald and Rafael Cruz really did get involved, in very different ways, in a particular moment of Cuba-concerned activism canonical: https://time.com/4316494/lee-harvey-oswald-donald-trump/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-03T19:09:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:48:09.289Z article:section: History og:title: Donald Trump and the Truth About Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba og:description: Lee Harvey Oswald and Rafael Cruz were on different sides of the debate over Cuba in the 1960s og:url: https://time.com/4316494/lee-harvey-oswald-donald-trump/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd0899282c6bea565/698891b3a988caffb16b7b29/oswald.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Lee Harvey Oswald og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Donald Trump and the Truth About Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba twitter:description: Lee Harvey Oswald and Rafael Cruz were on different sides of the debate over Cuba in the 1960s twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd0899282c6bea565/698891b3a988caffb16b7b29/oswald.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Donald Trump and the Truth About Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 3, 2016 7:09 PM UTC  Mugshot of Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, taken by the Dallas Police department on Nov. 23, 1963 Mugshot of Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, taken by the Dallas Police department on Nov. 23, 1963Hulton Archive / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 3, 2016 7:09 PM UTC In one of the stranger subplots of the 2016 Republican primary, Donald Trump [cited an unsubstantiated report](http://time.com/4316401/donald-trump-ted-cruz-father-john-f-kennedy/) Tuesday from a tabloid that Ted Cruz’s father was with President John F. Kennedy’s assassin in 1963. The report rests on the thinnest of journalistic evidence: The _National Enquirer_ claimed that a Rafael Cruz is standing near Lee Harvey Oswald in a grainy black-and-white photo of Oswald taken in August of 1963, a few months before the assassination. The tabloid does not corroborate the claim in any other way and [an expert on the assassination found it dubious](http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36195317). For its part, the Cruz campaign said the idea is [“cheap tabloid garbage.”](http://time.com/4316401/donald-trump-ted-cruz-father-john-f-kennedy/) The story also doesn’t gibe with other reports about Cruz’s father during an interesting period in Cuban-American history. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) Since 1952, Cuba had been [ruled](http://time.com/vault/issue/1952-04-14/page/41/) by strongman Fulgencio Batista. Castro and his compatriots had attempted in 1953 to lead an uprising against Batista’s government, and in 1956 they [began](http://time.com/vault/issue/1956-12-10/page/44/) another revolt that would ultimately prove successful. During the course of those years, Castro was often portrayed in the U.S. press as the leader of a well-meaning if perhaps quixotic effort to restore democracy. “We have assumed the responsibility of throwing out Batista’s dictatorship and re-establishing the constitutional rights and freedoms of the people,” he [told](http://time.com/vault/issue/1958-04-14/page/37/) TIME in 1958. ### A History of Cuba-U.S. Relations in 13 TIME Covers  Fulgencio Batista on the Apr. 26, 1937, cover of TIME TIME  Fidel Castro on the Jan. 26, 1959, cover of TIME Cover Credit: BORIS CHALIAPIN  Che Guevara on the Aug. 8, 1960, cover of TIME Cover Credit: BERNARD SAFRAN  Jose Miro Cardona on the Apr. 28, 1961, cover of TIME TIME  Blas Roca on the Apr. 27, 1962, cover of TIME Cover Credit: BERNARD SAFRAN  Adm. George Anderson on the Nov. 2, 1962, cover of TIME Boris Chaliapin  Fidel Castro on the Oct. 8, 1965, cover of TIME Cover Credit: BERNARD SAFRAN  Fidel Castro (and others) on the Jun. 13, 1969, cover of TIME Cover Credit: KARSH, HARRY REDL, BEN MARTIN.  Fidel Castro and Cyrus Vance on the Sept. 17, 1979, cover of TIME Cover Credit: RODDEY E. MIMS; HIRES-GAMMA/LIAISON.  Fidel Castro on the Dec. 6, 1993, cover of TIME Cover Credit: GIANFRANCO GORGONI  The Sept. 5, 1994, cover of TIME Cover Credit: PAUL DAVIS  Fidel Castro on the Feb. 20, 1995, cover of TIME Cover Credit: DAVID BURNETT  Fidel Castro and the Pope on the Jan. 26, 1998, cover of TIME Cover Credit: GERARD RANCINAN It was during that period, in 1957, that Rafael Cruz suffered a beating from the forces of Batista. (Rafael Cruz has [often](https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-gop-senate-candidate-says-no-rubio-father-151607155.html?ref=gs) been named as an active fighter on Castro’s side in the 1950s, though some acquaintances of his youth have [claimed](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/politics/cuban-peers-dispute-ted-cruzs-fathers-story-of-fighting-for-castro.html) that his revolutionary actions weren’t quite as extreme as that.) Not long after that incident, he fled for the United States, initially on a student visa. As [reported](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/11/19/the-party-next-time) by the _New Yorker_, Rafael Cruz continued to advocate for the revolution after his arrival in the United States but before Castro actually succeeded. Ted Cruz has [said](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/11/19/the-party-next-time) that by 1960, his father had renounced his support for Castro and made serious attempts to communicate that fact to anyone he had spoken to before his change of heart. This timeline matches up well with the popular American take on Cuba: it was in 1959 and 1960 that the extent of Castro’s communism, and the strictness with which he would rule, became clear. The initial trade embargo between the U.S. and Cuba began in 1960, the U.S. embassy in Havana closed in January of 1961, even as crowds of Cubans attempted to get out. **MORE:** [Why Did the U.S. and Cuba Sever Diplomatic Ties in the First Place?](http://time.com/3637822/cuba-history/) As for Lee Harvey Oswald, as TIME [reported](http://time.com/vault/issue/1963-11-29/page/33/) almost immediately after President Kennedy’s death, he once admitted to appreciating Communist ideas from the time he was a teenager—a notable admission during the Cold War—but nonetheless joined the Marine Corps and ended up serving in Japan, where he was court-martialed twice before getting a discharge in 1959\. After that, he went to the Soviet Union, where he met his wife and attempted to become a Russian citizen. Failing that, he returned to Texas in 1962, where his troubles continued, as TIME explained: --- > “” --- Fair Play for Cuba had been (prior to its [disbanding](http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/lee%5Fv1.htm) shortly after Kennedy was killed) a New York-based organization that, as was explained during [a radio debate](http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo3/exhibits/stuck3.htm) in which Oswald participated in August of 1963, supported the re-establishment of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. “We are not particularly interested in what Cuban exiles or rightists members of rightist organizations have to say,” Oswald said at that time. “We are primarily interested in the attitude of the U.S. government toward Cuba.” Shortly after that “scuffle” in New Orleans, Oswald moved to Dallas. In the fall of 1963, he[ tried to go to Cuba](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/oswald-the-cia-and-mexico-city/) but could not get a visa. In November of 1963, he shot JFK. **MORE:** [Read TIME’s 1964 Special Section on the Warren Commission Report](http://time.com/3422341/the-warren-commission-report/) Today, after decades of tension between the United States and Cuba, the years between roughly 1956 and 1960 are easy to overlook. But during those years the world had to quickly reassess the character of Fidel Castro. For a person of Cuban origin living in the U.S. at that time, as Rafael Cruz was, the switch from supporting the revolutionary Castro before 1959 to opposing him after 1960 was not all that surprising. Meanwhile, the timing of Oswald’s pro-Castro period—coming _after_ 1962, when it was already clear what a Castro regime would look like—is in line with Oswald’s more extreme communist leanings. That would have put Rafael Cruz and Oswald on different sides in 1963, making the _Enquirer_‘s claim unlikely. But the Kennedy assassination has always attracted conspiracy theories, no matter how unlikely. One [conspiracy theory](http://time.com/vault/issue/1966-11-25/page/42/) holds that Oswald’s support of Castro was staged to give the U.S. a reason to invade Cuba, while [another](http://time.com/vault/issue/1978-10-02/page/26/) holds pretty much the opposite, that Oswald actively conspired with Castro in the killing. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4316494/lee-harvey-oswald-donald-trump/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4316494/lee-harvey-oswald-donald-trump/"},"headline":"Donald Trump and the Truth About Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba","datePublished":"2016-05-03T19:09:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T07:48:09.289Z","description":"Lee Harvey Oswald and Rafael Cruz were on different sides of the debate over Cuba in the 1960s","url":"https://time.com/4316494/lee-harvey-oswald-donald-trump/","keywords":["politics","2016 Election","Cuba","ted cruz","Donald Trump"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd0899282c6bea565/698891b3a988caffb16b7b29/oswald.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd0899282c6bea565/698891b3a988caffb16b7b29/oswald.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Lee Harvey Oswald","caption":"Lee Harvey Oswald","creditText":"Hulton Archive / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/politics/","name":"politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4316494/lee-harvey-oswald-donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump and the Truth About Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba"}}]}] ```