Did Obama Wear A Che Guevara T-Shirt During His Cuba Visit?

Our weekly check-in with the Texas Truth-O-Meter.

By Alain StephensApril 6, 2016 9:45 am,

Sid Miller, the state’s agriculture commissioner, claims that during his visit to Cuba, President Barack Obama was flaunting a Che Guevara t-shirt.

Is that a fact? Gardner Selby of the PolitiFact Texas fact-checking team has the answer.

During President Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, he took in a baseball game, met with leader Raul Castro and attended a wreath ceremony for a Cuban journalist and poet.

In the background of the ceremony was a mural of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara several stories high on the side of a building. Guevara, who met exiled brothers Fidel and Raul Castro in Mexico in 1955, and was a key figure in the Cuban Revolution that overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Obama’s photo in front of the mural drew criticism, but according to one Republican politician, it wasn’t the only such picture.

Back in Texas, Sid Miller, posted a photo to his Facebook fan page that provided a rare, if unseen, glimpse into Obama’s Havana trip from 1,000 miles away.

In a March 22, 2016 post on his Facebook fan page, Miller shared a photo of the president holding a blue T-shirt adorned with the face of Guevara, with the caption:

“President Obama refuses to return to the United States in order to meet with European leaders to discuss a response to today’s terror attacks in Brussels — attacks that severely injured a number of Americans. Instead, he remains in Cuba holding a shirt depicting the image of Che Guevara–one of the most reviled terrorists of the modern age — a murdering thug who was responsible for thousands of innocent deaths. President Obama is laughing at us. He understands the symbolism of this picture and yet he doesn’t care. I believe his actions are disgraceful. Do you agree?”

 

Hear how Miller’s claim scored in the player above.