Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday quoted '90s hip-hop party pioneers Cypress Hill to describe the Trump administration's view of Iran's remaining leadership amid a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room — as the first in what is understood to be a series of stand-ins for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt while she is on maternity leave — Rubio said the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports would continue until Iran ceases efforts to prevent free maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz through what he described as “piracy.”
“There is no scenario here in which, if they decide to join a ladder of escalation, they wind up getting the last say, but our preference is for these straits to be opened to the way they're supposed to be open, back to the way it was. Anyone can use it. No mines in the water, nobody paying tolls. That's what we have to get back to, and that's the goal here,” he said.
“The time has come for Iran to make a sensible choice, and it's not easy for them to do that, obviously, because they have a fracture in their own leadership system ... and apart from that, I mean, the top people in that government are, to say the least ... they're insane in the brain, and so we need to address that.”
Rubio’s quip about the mental condition of leadership in Tehran was lifted straight from the chorus of “Insane in the Brain,” the first single off Cypress Hill’s 1993 album “Black Sunday.”
Originally a diss track aimed at rival rappers Chubb Rock and Kid Frost, the hit song was described by The Independent’s then-music critic, Ben Thompson, as "potent dose of marijuana-inflected nasal squeak-rap” and “the party record of the aeon.”
He later reached back another year into the American hip-hop discography after telling reporters how Tehran is “facing real, catastrophic destruction to their economy, generational destruction to their economy, generational destruction to the wealth of their country imposed on themselves by the by the actions that they're taking.”
Quoting the N.W.A. rapper and actor Ice Cube’s 1992 song “Check Yo Self,” Rubio later added: “They should check themselves before they wreck themselves in the direction that they're going.”
The secretary of state, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, has long had a habit of inserting rap and hip-hop lyrics into his public remarks.
During a cabinet meeting in March, Rubio cribbed a line from Public Enemy’s 1990 single “Welcome to the Terrordome” when he said the Pentagon “lets the drummer get wicked over every portion of Iran that has military capabilities,” echoing Chuck D’s lyrics: “I got so much trouble on my mind/Refuse to lose/Here's your ticket/Hear the drummer get wicked.”
Earlier in the year, he cited Notorious BIG’s “Juicy” when discussing the U.S. operation to remove ex-Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, telling reporters: “If you don’t know, now you know.”
Rubio is known to be a massive fan of Public Enemy, having told GQ in 2012 that the pioneering group was “transformative” in a way that had a huge influence on the East Coast and West Coast rap artists he listened to as a young man.
In addition to being the first person to serve as both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, he is also known to have a longtime interest in spinning records and was recently filmed stepping into a DJ booth for a turn at a family wedding.
Asked what name he calls himself when behind the turntables, he declined to answer and told reporters: “You’re not ready for my DJ name.”
The ex-Florida senator’s turn at the White House lectern wasn’t the only Trump administration official’s outing before reporters that produced a strange moment.
Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was forced to deny a claim that Iran has trained dolphins to conduct suicide attacks against U.S. forces and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking at a press briefing at the Pentagon alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Caine, Hegseth was asked about “reports of kamikaze dolphins” that have appeared in some news outlets after Iran claimed it could use previously unused weapons in the two-month-old conflict. The BBC reported in 2000 that Tehran once purchased dolphins that had been trained for military operations.
Caine at first looked incredulous and said, “I haven’t heard the kamikaze dolphins thing” before joking, ‘You mean like sharks with laser beams?” a reference to the 1997 film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, in which Mike Myers’ character Dr. Evil complains that he could not acquire “sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads” and was forced to settle for laser-equipped “mutant sea bass.”
Hegseth then fielded the question, which appeared to emanate from an earlier Wall Street Journal report on Iran grasping for ways to break the Trump blockade of the strait.
“I can’t confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, but I can confirm they [Iran] don’t,” Hegseth said.
