Surprise, surprise—Republicans are casting stones at President Obama for his trip to Cuba, Sunday, and chief among them is 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, who says it will “legitimize the corrupt and oppressive Castro regime.”
Politico published a piece by Cruz, Sunday, titled, “In Cuba, Obama Will Legitimize the Corrupt and Ignore the Oppressed,” in which the Texas senator states:
“On Sunday, President Barack Obama, a retinue of celebrities in tow, is expected to arrive in the Cuban capital to hang out with Raúl Castro and his henchmen, all of which will be breathlessly documented by the media mavens along for the ride.”
Cruz promoted his Politico op-ed via Twitter, stating in the tweet:
“I have a word for the people of Cuba who will witness the gaudy spectacle in Havana: America has not forgotten you…”
I have a word for the people of Cuba who will witness the gaudy spectacle in Havana: America has not forgotten you: https://t.co/AiTSTraOPA
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 20, 2016
Cruz also writes in his Politico piece:
“Meanwhile, political prisoners languishing in dungeons across the island will hear this message: Nobody has your back. You’re alone with your tormentors. The world has forgotten about you.”
He adds:
“There will be no mojitos at the U.S. Embassy for them.”
Presumably freeing up time from his secret life as a lusty john, as alleged by Anonymous, Cruz also found time to state that Castro “denies the existence” of Cuba’s 100+ “ong-term ‘prisoners of conscious,'” then takes a secondary jab to state the exact number is tough to confirm due to Cuba restricting international organizations from access to its prisons.
Cruz states, however:
“But we know they are there and that hundreds are held for shorter periods, and beaten in prison regularly.”
So far, there has been no word from Cruz on the thousands of prisoners right here on U.S. soil who are beaten and killed in American prisons on the regular, though. There is no political advantage in it for him.
Cruz goes on to claim “1,141 Cubans [were] detained for political reasons last month, according to the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.”
He writes:
“So sycophancy is having the effect it always does: It is telling our enemies that they can behave with impunity.”
Naturally, Cruz just had to remind readers that his own father is Cuban, stating his dear old dad had been “beaten and tortured by Batista’s regime,” which paved the way for voter-schmoozing in his follow-up statement that both his aunt and his pappy were “brutalized by Castro’s thugs” only to find “freedom” in the grand old bosom of Lady Liberty here in the United States. (Cue the rocket’s red glare.)
Cruz pens:
“That freedom can come to Cuba, and I pledge to work to make it so. But it cannot happen by enriching and empowering the dictatorship, while they export terrorism throughout Latin America.”
He adds:
“And it cannot happen by forgetting the heroism and suffering of the brave souls who have opposed the Castros for so many decades.”
Obama is the first sitting president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge showed up in a battleship back in 1928.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr, available under Creative Commons license.
