If CNN’s Jim Acosta spoke to the mass-murdering Stalinist dictator Raul Castro with half the insolence he sputters at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders who could blame him?
After all, Jim Acosta’s father fled Stalinist Cuba as an 11 year- old, while Raul Castro destroyed his homeland and shattered his family, same as the Castros — through mass-executions, mass-jailings, mass larceny and exile--shattered practically every family in Cuba.
But no. While addressing the mass-murdering Cuban dictator Jim Acosta’s nervous brownnosing outdid both Eddie Haskell upon his every greeting of June Cleaver and The Scarecrow’s upon meeting the Wizard of Oz.
Acosta’s shivering supplication to Raul Castro took place two years before his (attempted) third-degrees to Huckabee Sanders. So the contrast wasn’t glaring. Nonetheless, it was difficult for many Cuba-watchers to control their gag reflex while watching the jittery Jim Acosta’s pathetic brown nosing of Raul Castro in Havana during Obama’s trip in March, 2016:
Jim Acosta: “Thank you, your honor…I mean your Excellency…I mean your Wizardry…”
Raul Castro: “You have the effrontery of asking me about political prisoners, you billowing bale of bovine fodder?!”
No…Seriously, amigos. Here’s the exchange:
Jim Acosta: “Gracias, President Castro. Thank you, President Castro, for your hospitality here in Havana. I wanted to know, please sir, if you have Cuban political prisoners and why you don’t release them.”
Raul Castro (whose regime, over the decades, has jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s during the Great Terror and murdered more political prisoners in its first three years in power than Hitler’s regime murdered in its first six) :
“Well, give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them immediately. Just mention the list. What political prisoners? Give me a name or names or when — after this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners, and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends.”
END OF STORY! That was IT, amigos. That future ROARING LION (!!!) of a Sarah Huckabee Sanders interrogator promptly tucked his wagging tail between his shivering legs, whimpered another “please” and “thank you” to “President” Castro (who everybody with half a brain knows keeps hundreds of political prisoners hidden from the Red Cross) shut up, and sat down.
Several organizations including the Cuban-American National Foundation, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the Center for a Free Cuba quickly compiled lists of Cuban political prisoners to present to Castro. But we are unaware of any follow-up by Jim “Roaring Lion!” Acosta with “President” Castro regarding the list of political prisoners or the Stalinist dictator’s pledge to promptly release them.
Actually, CNN’s Acosta is simply upholding a long and sniveling CNN tradition. Indeed, no serious Cuba-watcher expects a network bestowed a Havana bureau by KGB-trained apparatchiks to even feign honesty, or even play-act its professed duty “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
“Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy!" CNN founder Ted Turner gushed to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997. "You people would like him! Most people in Cuba like him."
Within weeks CNN was granted its coveted Havana Bureau, the first ever granted by Castro to a foreign network. Bureau chief Lucia Newman (now with Al Jazeera) assured viewers, "CNN will be given total freedom to do what we want and to work without censorship."
Hard-hitting stories immediately followed. To wit: CNN soon featured Fidel's office in its "Cool Digs" segment of CNN's "Newsstand." "When was the last time you saw a cup full of pencils on the boss's desk?" asked perky CNN anchor Steven Frazier. "And they do get used – look at how worn down the erasers are! Years ago, our host worked as an attorney, defending poor people. ... He's Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader since 1959!"
Retired U.S counter-intelligence officer Chris Simmons explains how people like Jim Acosta and Lucia Newman are bestowed “journalist visas” by the Castro-Family-Crime -Syndicate: “The vetting procedure starts the minute the Cuban regime receives a (journalist) visa application,” says the man long-regarded as America’s top Cuba spycatcher. “When those smiling Cuban “guides” greet you at the airport they know plenty about you, and from several angles.” (Chris Simmons, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s top Cuban spycatcher, now retired.)
In brief, you’re not getting and keeping a Cuban journalist visa (much less a Havana Bureau) unless you shamelessly (and genuinely) collude with Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored ministry of propaganda—i.e. unless you create Fake News. This isn’t rocket science, amigos.
Indeed since 2009, upon his first visit to the Castro-Family-Fiefdom, Jim Acosta has been dutifully following his CNN/Democrat Party instruction manual and dutifully propagandizing against the (so-called) Cuba embargo-- the lifting of which has been the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate’s obsessive goal for decades.
“It's not that my dad was an anti-Castro ideologue shaking his fist at his former homeland,” Acosta wrote upon arriving in Havana in March 2016. “He was never that guy…. Also, he grew up in Virginia, not Miami. It was just a different Cuban-American experience.”
See there, amigos? It’s not that Acosta’s Stalinist hosts hadn’t completely vetted him –and knew his and his family’s political views frontwards and backwards--before issuing his visa. It’s that on top of publicly preening his “trustworthiness” to his Stalinist hosts, Jim—for the benefit of his CNN audience--had to also preeningly distance himself from that insufferable majority of tacky “right-wing Cuban-exiles.”
Alas, President Trump-- owing both to his sharp foreign-policy negotiating instincts and to the advice of the sharp Cuban-Americans on his team—strongly supports these sanctions against the armed robbers of $7 billion in U.S. property. Indeed the “Cuba embargo” still ranks among the crown jewels of post-WWII U.S. foreign policy initiatives, and has saved the U.S. taxpayer billions in further robberies by the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member