BUCK: We want to talk to you about the situation unfolding this week in Cuba, the oppression, the machinery of authoritarianism is fully underway now, people being beaten in the streets, being taken, in one case even, I believe, live off the air a YouTube journalist was arrested. People are being seized. They have opened fire. It is a very tense situation, and that’s an understatement. Senator Marco Rubio wants everyone to be very clear about how we should describe this regime and what’s going on, because there’s certainly some hesitation from Democrats to speak about this in clear and straightforward terms.

RUBIO: We should be clear in our language. We don’t just condemn this tyranny, we condemn this communist, this Marxist, this socialist tyranny. Call it for what it is. You can open up all you want. We can pass a bill here that says open to Cuba, a hundred percent open, you can do whatever you want, full, free trade, you can do whatever you want. At the end of the day, the Cuban regime will control that opening. It’s not just what we want to do; it’s what they want to do. You want to do tourism? Guess what? All the tourist sites are owned by a holding company named GAESA controlled by the Cuban military. You want to send them food? That’s great. Guess who gets it? ALIMPORT, which is a government military owned agriculture company. You want to send money? They take it. You know why? Because socialism is about control. They will use any opening as a tool, as a weapon against their people ’cause that’s what socialism does.

BUCK: Clay, this is what we need. And it’s a shame we don’t have it from the White House and from the Democrat leadership. Not milquetoast, “Oh, we stand with the right of protesters to have their voices heard.” You know, this isn’t about whether they’re gonna build a highway that will endanger the spotted owl somewhere. This is about oppression and authoritarianism with actual boot heels on people’s necks and faces as we’re speaking. But the Democrats, it’s just reality, man, they’ve got an ideological sympathy, a soft spot for these commies in Cuba.

CLAY: That’s true. And I also think this is the impact of saying American legitimacy and moral authority doesn’t exist. Partly that’s because they have soft spot. I think you’re right. Bernie Sanders has said great things about Fidel Castro. The guy went on his honeymoon to Moscow, for God’s sakes. You have all these squad members — I talk about Colin Kaepernick and some of the social justice warriors in spots. Remember Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem, and in the press conference immediately thereafter he wore a Fidel Castro T-shirt.

And so you have this lionization in some ways. It’s not only that however, it’s like that while you were also lionizing these socialist, communist dictators, you are also simultaneously you aren’t undercutting the moral authority of America, and that’s why, Buck, I’m so fired up when I see in Hong Kong everyone who is protesting had the American flag. In Cuba people who were protesting were waving the American flag. Around the world, maybe even more so than with the Democrats here in America, people understand what the American flag represents. It’s not as BLM Utah said a symbol of hate and oppression. It’s a symbol of freedom for all right-thinking people who are also in favor of freedom around the world.

BUCK: Look. Cuba has also been a symbol and even a true safe haven for some of the worst people in the western hemisphere in the western world for a long time. If you hate America, you have had solidarity with Castro. And if you have solidarity with Castro, you also then are there with all of his political bedfellows, the Soviet Union, of course, which was propping up the communist Cuban regime until the fall of the wall, but also Iran and Venezuela and the worst rogue state actors in the world are buddies of the Cubans, and the Cubans have been exporting revolution and misery and have had a very aggressive intelligence service, very aggressive military apparatus stretching back for decades while their people live in this misery.

There’s also problems that Cuba poses domestically on the political front, which we’ve talked about. What do you mean, you have a Latinx which I always think it’s funny, every Latino or Latina I know, like, they just throw their hands up in the air in, like, a combination of bemusement and despair at this notion that Latinx — anyway, everyone from the Latin-American background, they’re supposed to believe that they’re Democrats, right? That’s what’s supposed to happen. But Cubans in Florida in particular are capitalists, entrepreneurs, people who believe in freedom.

And that’s a problem for the Democrat narrative, which is, let’s just bring in as many Latin-American folks as possible ’cause they’re gonna want what the left wants in this country. And that, then, factors into the actual decision-making right now about what’s going on with our borders. Here you have a situation, Clay, where this would be true asylum seeking —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — in the most pure sense. People fleeing political oppression, torture, and murder coming to U.S. shores. And the Cubans have been doing this for now decades, as we know. But right now it’s an imminent issue. If you believe in asylum, you must believe in getting the Cuban people who can make it here, giving them asylum, at least give them their hearing on U.S. soil. But here’s what the, “Oh, we’re a nation of immigrants, the Democrat Party, under DHS Mayorkas has to say.

MAYORKAS: Allow me to be clear. If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States. The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Again, I repeat, do not risk your life attempting to enter the United States illegally. You will not come to the United States.

BUCK: So while we have a southern border that is the most porous, open, and overwhelmed, it has ever been, with Central American economic migrates paying the drug cartels and lying, in many cases reading from a script so they can pass the credible fear stage of entering the U.S. illegally, I might add, which says why they are apprehended. The Biden administration gives us all teary-eyed lectures about how we’re a nation of immigrants for that, and they say it’s about asylum, which it’s not. Here, Clay, we have an actual asylum situation, and the Democrats are saying, “Don’t come, and we won’t let you stay.”

CLAY: Communist thugs are kicking in the doors of democratic protesters all over Cuba, people who want to stand for freedom, for justice, for capitalism, for a market-based economy, that is the very definition of needing asylum. People are willing to risk death on “boats” — and I’m using that in quotation marks — that are virtually unstable at sea in an effort to get to this land of freedom, and this is fundamentally un-American. It’s an outrage what those comments were that were just made. Absolutely indefensible.

BUCK: And when you think about the rhetoric they use, the things that they say about — about the southern border and people who — I mean, they’re cheating the asylum system, Clay. And I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, I’ve actually heard what they’ll say to even pass the credible fear system and analysis there. You know, let’s come back into this because you could tell, this has got me — I’m very fired up ’cause it just shows what a bunch of frauds the Democrats are specifically on immigration.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We’re talking about the situation in Cuba, and we just heard, hey, if you try to get to America to escape the oppression and the beatings and all of the totalitarian mistreatment coming from the communist government in Cuba, you will not be given asylum here. The flip side to that, how about the mayor of Miami came out and said the United States should consider air strikes. Let’s play that.

SUAREZ: What should be being contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba similar to what has happened in both administrations, in both Republican and Democrat administrations, and Republican with Bush in Panama they deposed Noriega, and that country had peaceful democracy for decades. And you had interventions by — by Democratic presidents, taking out Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. It’s a sovereign country where they took out a terrorist that probably saved thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives and President Clinton in Kosovo intervention in a humanitarian issue with air strikes.

MACCALLUM: Are you suggesting air strikes in Cuba?

SUAREZ: What I’m suggesting is that option is one that has to be explored and cannot be just simply discarded as an option that is not on the table.

CLAY: Joe Biden not going to institute air strikes I think it’s fair to say in Cuba. But I do think — and I understand there’s skepticism out there in the wake of Afghanistan, in the wake of Iraq, there’s a lot skepticism from people about getting involved in other countries — other countries’ dirty laundry, for lack of a better way of subscribing it.

BUCK: That’s a bare minimum, skepticism. I think there’s a lot of folks’ revulsion at the idea of going into some other country now where there’s not an imminent U.S. interest and getting involved militarily.

CLAY: Well, what I would say about the imminent U.S. interest is, there’s a lot more imminent U.S. interest in Cuba than there is just based on proximity to the United States in the sense that it has been a puppet regime for United States enemies for a long time. The other thing I would say is there’s a history, at least in some — a living memory of some form of freedom in Cuba in a way that I don’t think there is in many of the — like Afghanistan, for instance, and the one positive I would say, there does not appear to be the same tribal-related nature in Cuba as would exist in certainly Afghanistan or other places.

BUCK: All right. Let’s dive into this, El Commandante Travis. Tell me, man, airstrikes, are we landing a Marine expeditionary —

CLAY: — what would you strike, exactly? I mean, are you gonna wipe out, like, the Cuban leadership? I’m not sure —

BUCK: Look. You would go after the military and security apparatus first. That’s the obvious move, you know, but —

CLAY: Is the military committed, you think, truly to —

BUCK: Good question. Good question.

CLAY: — government? I don’t know the answer to that.

BUCK: The communists — ’cause there’s an actual Communist Party —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — right? The current leader of Cuba is the first secretary of the Communist Party. They use Khrushchev-era language to describe where they are.

CLAY: How deep is that support is the question?

BUCK: Yeah, so you definitely need to get rid of them. You definitely need to deal with that. I mean, Miguel Diaz-Canel who’s been a lifelong communist bureaucrat and now the leader of the country, those guys, the people around him, they’re guilty of human rights violations. They’re going to prison forever.

CLAY: They’re gonna fight to the end.

BUCK: And that’s if crowds don’t get a hold of them, and they know. So they’re gonna be dead-enders on this one. So you gotta figure, okay. What are we gonna do? Air strikes to what end? And, remember, air strikes are always a little bit messy. People are gonna die, to really do this, you’re gonna — you’re gonna hit things that you don’t necessarily want to hit. There are gonna be civilian casualties. Then the next level would be how much are we willing to do in terms of policing this country on behalf of what would be a new regime, what would be the international community’s response be. And, by the way, Cuba is a dictatorship that has been focused on security and military operations, and its primary — so while they don’t have a a sophisticated military apparatus, they do have a sophisticated intelligence apparatus, and that stretches back to their training by the KGB in the Soviet era.

And also because they have no rules, right? I always try to explain this to people. When you look at something like a British MI5 versus what you’re dealing with in a totalitarian state, MI5, there are laws, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I mean, they’re domestic security apparatus of Great Britain; whereas, you look at Cuba, they can do whatever they want.

Clay, I mean, air strikes tend to lead to more than air strikes. I mean, you brought up Kosovo, for example. We’re talking about full-scale military intervention with allies. I don’t know. Could get very messy, but you’re not loan. And you the mayor of Miami are seeing this eye-to-eye.

CLAY: I haven’t necessarily endorsed air strikes yet, but I do think if you ever want something to change in Cuba, it’s gonna take way more than Joe Biden putting out a statement to the White House website.