On Cuba, Rubio and DeSantis Lead While Biden Dithers

CLAY: We’re talking about Black Lives Matter and the lies that they are saying about Cuba.  Wanted to give a shout-out here to Marco Rubio, who I thought really kind of summed it up pretty well, Buck.  He tweeted out, senator from Florida, “The extortionist ring known as the Black Lives Matter organization took a break today from shaking down corporations for millions & buying themselves mansions to share their support for the Communist regime in  regime in Cuba.”  That’s pretty succinctly said.  I give him credit.

BUCK:  I gotta tell you — Republicans in Florida when it comes to Cuba and the Castroite tyrants, they go all in, man.  Rubio’s finest moments are on Cuba.  Ted Cruz good on Cuba too.  He’s obviously a Texas Republican.

Governor Ron DeSantis, as we mentioned, as well has got this idea — Clay, what do you think about this?  He wants to have U.S. firms — he brought this up at a roundtable earlier this week — to beam the internet to Cubans via satellite, essentially keep the coms going, keep the pressure on by letting the world and their fellow Cubans be able to, one, coordinate, and also share with the rest of the world what they’re seeing there.

This reminds me back in 2009 when in the early days of the Obama administration, actually, there was some State Department folks who tried to get Twitter to not go down for maintenance so they can continue — now, that was a minor thing and I think it was a little showboating by a few State Department people, but it was an idea at least.

CLAY:  The idea was that in Iran they wanted people to still be able to communicate as they were trying to rise up against that Iranian government.

BUCK:  Yeah.  I mean, it didn’t work but they tried something.  On this one, Cuba, as you point out, so close to the U.S., that there’s gotta be influence stuff that we can do here at a minimum.

And just the fact the Biden administration hasn’t stood up and said, “We will hold any regime officials guilty of human rights violations, any police chief, anybody who cracks down on protesters, you’re gonna set foot on U.S. soil in five years, we’re gonna lock you up in federal prison.”

CLAY:  I love this idea.  You’re right.  Biden has been too weak on Cuba, but we have to credit — we just said to Marco Rubio — but I love this idea from Ron DeSantis.  Because people out there are saying, well, why does this matter? Right now that Cuba has shut down internet access to people in their country to try to prevent imagery of protests and videos and everything else from being able to be shared around the world, which is a common move by totalitarian governments

BUCK:  And it just means the brutality factor is gonna go up considerably. They’re already doing this, of course.  But when people see these things, it leaves a much more lasting impression.  When you read about people being taken off the streets from their family by Cuban thugs for the regime – but when you hear the screams and see the video, there’s that visceral connection to it.  And that’s what the regime, at all costs — ’cause they’re still acting like these are American-backed —

CLAY:  Yes.

BUCK:  — insurrectionists.

CLAY:  Which is what BLM is saying.  They have the same talking points as BLM, the Cuban government and BLM.   And also, Buck, to your point, it’s not only about being able to share what’s going on in Cuba in the real world, it’s also about Cubans being able to see that there is massive support for what they are doing from the United States — from their friends and family all over the state of Florida, where protests have broken out in favor of the Cuban protesters where we actually have freedom here.  That’s an important aspect of this, too, that symbiosis.

BUCK:  And Cuba has also just been a place where Americans who betray their country will flee, people that murder cops. I remember, Assata Shakur was serving a life sentence for murder, she went down to Cuba  — murder of a police officer — she was granted political asylum.  Cuba is basically whatever they can do to agitate the United States government they’ll do. So the fact that you don’t have Democrats recognizing what’s really going on here and instead trying to pander to the far left BLM, Marxist base, shows you who’s really calling the shots in that party, Clay.

CLAY:  Yeah, there’s no doubt at all.  I mean, again, you can’t condemn communism?  That’s a pretty easy line, I would think, for everybody to be able to condemn.