Tipsheet

Flashback: Democrat Praise for Cuba's Communist Regime

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  July 13, 2021 12:30 PM

As brave Cuban freedom fighters take to city streets across the island nation to protest Cuba's communist regime, many Democrats have refused to acknowledge the root of Cuba's inequality and injustice. The Biden Administration portrayed protests as a response to a shortage of Wuhan coronavirus vaccines and Jen Psaki spun the government-enforced restrictions as "economic mismanagement." 

There have also been many half-hearted statements of support for the Cuban people that conveniently omitted mentions of the communist despots who've maintained control through violence and intimidation and have made Cuba infamous as one of the world's worst human rights abusers. 

Even worse than glossing over the communist roots of Cuba's misfortune, Democrats have an established track record of being star apologists for Cuba's dictators. Their past statements make it easier to understand their current hesitancy to call out the horrible economic and living conditions enforced by communist dictators. 

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I) has defended Castro throughout his career. In the 1980s, he praised the Castro regime's "literacy" program that was little more than re-education to indoctrinate Cuban youth in communist ideology.

"He educated their kids, gave them healthcare, totally transformed the society," Sanders said. 

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"It's unfair to simply say everything is bad," he later claimed, doubling down on his praise of the murderous regime and its abuse of Cuba's citizens.

In the wake of dictator Fidel Castro's death, Democrats' attitude toward the communist regime was made even more clear as leftist leaders mourned the loss of a dictatorial tyrant. 

44th President of the United States Barack Obama infamously posed in front of a Che Guevara mural during a trip to Cuba, and noted upon Castro's death that "history will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him" before adding his "condolences to Fidel Castro’s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people."

Then-Secretary of State John Kerry offered a similar sentiment, saying "we extend our condolences to the Cuban people today as they mourn the passing of Fidel Castro" because "over more than half a century, he played an outsized role in their lives, and he influenced the direction of regional, even global affairs."

Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) called for Americans to "stop and pause and mourn" the death of Castro because "he led a revolution in Cuba that led social improvements for his people."

Lee's colleague Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) repeatedly traveled to work in Cuba as part of a Castro-affiliated organization and said the dictator's death was "a great loss" to the people he'd spent his life oppressing. That statement would later be recanted by Bass when it drew renewed criticism as she was considered to be Joe Biden's running mate in 2020. 

U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) not only argued there is equivalence between Castro's Cuba and the United States — choosing to call the deadly dictator "complex" — but was at one point a youth pastor at a New York church that hosted the despot.  

Across the aisle, Republican lawmakers are cheering on the freedom fighters who risk their own safety and what little freedom they have to speak out against their communist government.