BUCK: Clay and I keep going back and forth in every break. We got a couple of ideas we want to flesh out some more with all of you. One of them is the notion of what degree of intervention right now would be wise. I am very cautious about it. Clay is more forward leaning on it. So we’ll dive into that.

But there’s also a pretty deafening silence right now from Democrats who usually have so much to say about democracy and freedom and voting rights and all these things. And yet, Clay, when I look and I see the latest from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders or others on the issue of Cuba, I mean, it feels like, one, they’re not saying anything.

They’ve said nothing in 24 hours on their social media accounts. But beyond that even the Biden administration, it all feels perfunctory, it all feels a little boilerplate. And you can’t help but come away from this thinking, there is a long-standing abiding sympathy that the Democrats and the leftist elites in America have for socialism — and, yes, specifically for communism in Cuba.

We’ve all seen it. We know celebrities go there. They always talk about how great it is. “Oh, the health care is so great! The literacy rate is so high.” They’re always making praise. It’s a police state that locks people up and imprisons family members to pressure them.

That expels people to drown with or in front of their own children because they’re so desperate to get out of this hellhole situation. And the Democrats, I mean, right now if you look at CNN, CNN.com, you’ll see that their biggest concern is “the insurrection” and people not getting vaccinated enough.

CLAY: It’s a fundamental failure of our media and of our political culture, in my opinion, that everyone isn’t talking about Cuba right now. And, yes, I understand some people think that I am crazy, and I’ve been making this argument for decades. This is not something new. To me, when I look 90 miles south of the Keys and see Cuba sitting there…

And obviously I’m youngish, Buck, right? It wasn’t like I was around during the Bay of Pigs. It wasn’t like I was around during the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything like it. But I see it as an incredible blight upon America to a certain extent that we have allowed this regime to exist when it’s clear the Cuban people do not support it.

BUCK: It has been an unthinkable aircraft carrier of communism in the region the whole time.

CLAY: Yes. Yes.

BUCK: In Nicaragua, in El Salvador, in Venezuela and connections all over the world to communist regimes and authoritarians. Who are the friends of Cuba, Clay? That’s always a good place to start. Iran. Russia.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: All the governments that the Democrats supposedly dislike or hate, depending which we’re talking about, but they have an affinity. There’s a special place in the lib heart for totalitarian thugs running Cuba. I mean that’s just the truth.

CLAY: And I, when I see people in Cuba who are brave enough to take out American flags and protest in favor of freedom, we failed in Hong Kong. And I don’t know why the Hong Kong failure is not a bigger story because, to me, it’s a road map for what China is going to try to do with Taiwan, another island nation.

And we’re gonna have to, I believe, at some point decide the strategic ambiguity as it pertains to Taiwan is not going to be able to continue. And we’re gonna have to decide at some point or another — especially when you consider the overall power that Taiwan has from an economic perspective with their semiconductor industry.

We’re gonna have to decide at some point are we willing or not to defend Taiwan in the event that China invades. And I believe that Cuba, given the United States already has military bases on the island and everything else, I think that Cuba right now is poised, perhaps uniquely, in our history, if the United States makes the right choices, to potentially have a Berlin Wall-like moment where they finally — the people of Cuba — throw off the vestiges of this totalitarian government.

BUCK: So if the people do it… I mean, I’m sitting here hoping — and I know you are too — hoping and cheering for that.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: If the Cuban people are able to — and really all that has to happen would be large enough numbers of the police and military of the Cuban regime just say, “We’re not raising our hands or our guns against our own people,” and the whole thing can crumble if that takes place. But, remember, people in those positions may think that they’ll be imprisoned.

They’ll worry about their families. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You can say, “Of course, who wouldn’t want to just defend their country?” I’m hoping that that happens. But, I mean, Clay, I’ve gotta ’cause it seems like this is where your thoughts are leading us a little bit. If the Biden administration said in a week — which, by the way, they’re not going to, because they don’t…

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is maybe what you’re getting to here, and part of this is you’re illuminating. The Biden administration has no interest in giving the final shove to the regime in Cuba.

CLAY: Correct.

BUCK: They don’t want to do that. They’ll let it play out, but they’re not actually doing anything.

CLAY: They’re not actually willing to consider what I am suggesting, right? I mean, this would be a more interesting conversation if Trump were in office right now. Is there a way to militarily support these protesters in a way to let the United States government clearly make a statement, as opposed to putting a release on the White House website, which nobody can see in Cuba right now, right?

They’ve shut down the internet as best they can — and, by the way, what benefit does the United States saying, “We support you” do when there’s a jackbooted thug banging on your door that’s going to drag you out and your family and put you in prison. We literally are doing the least possible support that we could for Cuba. I would be more inclined to actually support the Cuban people who are standing up against this government, potentially with military support.

BUCK: When you say, “military support,” you’re talking intervention at some level like we set up or basically send down peacekeepers or something like that?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Is that what you mean?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Man, I gotta tell you, I don’t think the Trump administration even would, and I know it’s counterfactual.

CLAY: I know it’s a radical idea.

BUCK: Yeah. I don’t think the Trump administration would go anywhere near that even if they were in charge. I don’t think… What’s interesting is, Democrats generally don’t want to go to war for reasons of clear U.S. national security interests. They often do want to go to war for some humanitarian intervention somewhere that’s not really a war.

But then it turns into a war. So that is a history that they have, a long-standing history. But on this issue… Look, you just see this from everything that they say, from all the pronouncements, from the deafening silence of the Democrat left right now. They do not hate the Cuban regime.

They don’t hate the Cuban regime the way they hate Republicans and Karl Rove. They really have a soft spot. That’s very apparent, and that means that right now I think they’re happy to do the minimum. This is what I think we’ll expect from the Biden administration. The absolute bare minimum and hope that this is a problem they don’t have to really deal with. That’s what I think you can expect.

CLAY: And let me explain in my thought process, and you can tell me whether you think that I’m insane here or not. This, to me, is not Afghanistan, right? The Cuban people share, I think, a common history in a way that the tribes of Afghanistan do not. To me, this is not going into Iraq and expecting, like you said, Paul Wolfowitz.

“Oh, they’re gonna see us as the great saviors of this country.” I think that Cuba, with its population of 10 or 11 million people, and a history — at least in living memory in some sense — of democracy on that island, and the fact that when democracy existed, they had cars that they still use now, and they had a strong capitalistic economy that they were able to support.

I think there is a working historical knowledge of freedom and democracy, even if it’s been spread word-to-mouth, right, for the younger generation. And they have enough of an exposure to the United States. One of the things I always look at, Buck, is the people who were out protesting were young, and a lot of them were wearing American sports gear.

Like the videos that I saw, American sporting teams, right? The embargo, they have family in Cuba. They understand, I think, in many ways what American freedom represents and there is an elite, I would say, of Cuban exiles in the United States that have long been of the opinion that at some point, this awful regime is going to fall. So I see it different than some of the other nation building that we have done. I understand people have different views.

BUCK: We’ve been saying that Iran was gonna fall as well for a very long time, and there was an opening in 2009, the beginning of the Obama term. I keep people will draw some parallels here if they haven’t already. There was an opening where there were protests in the streets of Tehran.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And they smacked that whole thing down and shut it down, and the oppression machinery went into effect, and nothing really changed in Iran at all. In fact, a lot of people, a lot of good people who stood up for freedom were crushed. But look. Let’s address this, Clay. Clay wants more direct action. I’m seeing people. Some people are into it, some people are ready to go with El Comandante Clay here and —

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: — land troops and get ready for it. Others are taking more cautious approach on the Buckster side of things here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Let’s go to John in Savannah, Georgia. John, what’s up?

CALLER: Hey, Clay. The plan to invade Cuba could be an American version of Red Dawn.

CLAY: (chuckling)

CALLER: I just see a lot of pitfalls there.

BUCK: Yep.

CALLER: I don’t have any doubt. I have the greatest confidence in our troops. But with this administration? Really? The same people that are running the withdrawal in Afghanistan and our southern border? Do we want them to sign off on an ops plan and execute an ops plan in order to go into Cuba?

CLAY: I don’t think there’s any way they would do it, Buck, and that’s what we’re talking about. I’m saying from my perspective — and thanks for the call, by the way, John — I’m sorry, from my perspective, I’m tired of the United States response to Cuba being, “Hey, we’re in favor of freedom and democracy,” and then we just watch all the freedom and democracy protesters get their asses kicked, get thrown into boats, and try to make their way to the United States. At some point, you have to do, I think, something more than say, “Hey, we’re in favor of freedom and democracy.”

BUCK: We’re not going to go, and I understand you’re doing the thought experiment of what you would like to see happen if we could. But the Biden administration, there’s a 0% chance, in my mind — and I think that would be pretty widely held — that they’ll actually do any military intervention or as opposed to.

Remember there have been some very provocative things done by the Cubans in these recent years. There have been these sonic attacks that have been predecessor soundly confirmed where they’ve gone after U.S. diplomats with really a horrific and crippling weapons. It’s not even fully…

It’s like a microwave weapon that debilitates people. It makes them unable to balance. It unbalances them and creates tremendous pain. So the Cuban regime is still very aggressive toward the U.S. in all kinds of ways. But, I mean, one thing that I think we have to remember.

We’re talking about the Democrats annd where we’ll go with all of this, Clay, is they don’t want people to make the obvious connection between the 60-year-long failure of central planning, which is the heart of any socialist system, price controls, and social justice. When you don’t have mean capitalists like you and me and all of our listeners in the mix right?

CLAY: And Trump!

BUCK: What does it mean when the people who really believe in the social justice stuff, the CRT, the central planning, the collectivism get their way? Well, we have run experiments, and we’ve seen it. And the experiments are Cuba for the last 60 years, Venezuela, particularly for the last 15 or 20 years, Nicaragua at different times, the Soviet Union, North Korea.

CLAY: It fails! It always fails!

BUCK: It turns out that the Democratic socialists in our own midst here in America are not particularly keen on the American people figuring out, “Hold on a minute. You mean that Cuba could actually be a really prosperous, free, and happy place with amazing culture and good quality of life if only they got rid of the people telling them what to do all the time, who know the economy better and don’t want markets to work and don’t believe in private property and don’t believe in freedom? Ohhh.” So that’s in the background of everything the Democrat Party does on Cuba. They don’t want people to take that away as a lesson.

CLAY: Buck, everybody cruise ship in America circles Cuba. That’s what they do. If Cuba opened up, it would immediately, immediately be a capitalist nirvana in many ways as they started to embrace freedom. The quality of life of the average Cuban would skyrocket. Their health… There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal today.

They can’t get treatment for scabies, which is, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively minor illness that is usually easily treated, my understanding is, with antibiotics. Their government is so fallen apart in terms of health care right now. People are focused on covid? They can’t even treat basic illnesses that should be able to be solved with easy distribution of antibiotics!

BUCK: We’ve got the folks here who are ready to storm the beaches, a bunch of them.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Ray in Miami, Florida. Ray, you’re on the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.

CALLER: (laughing) I’m not sure I want to storm those beaches right away, but I think it is a Cuban problem. It is not an American problem. And, you know what? You’re absolutely right. It’s not just the medicine. It’s not about covid. This is about 60 years of oppression. It’s about 60 years of not having soap, water, just basic necessities. People can’t shower for three days ’cause the water gets cut off.

They cut off the electricity last night. They cut off the internet last night. We know what’s going on. You know, it’s not a surprise. They’re 90 miles away. Half the people in this country who are Cubans have people on the other side ’cause that’s what they do. They divide you and then they say, “Here, go back to U.S., send back your money,” and we’ve been supporting that island for the last 50 years.

BUCK: Yeah, remittances are also a big part of this that people don’t often talk about, but that’s been a huge source of support for people back in Cuba. I want to do Fred in Pompano, Florida, for a second. Fred, you said you’ve got family still there?

CALLER: Yep. I’m here in Pompano. Yeah, I came with the Peter Pan Program back in ’61. I was 14 years old. So I saw a lot of the things. And the previous caller is absolutely right. I could not put it better myself. I just want to make the point, the Rapid Response Brigades have been around for a long, long, long time.

And said it beautifully: It’s people that work for the government, government agencies stress after civilians, bused to the area of conflict where people are demonstrating and so on. And they physically beat them up put them on buses and take them away. So when the media is around taking pictures, taking video, it seems like it’s the same Cubans who are fighting. No, it’s not. They’re government agents. You put it beautifully. And the second point I want to make — and I know time’s short here — Bernie Sanders? Are you kidding me? (laughing) He is the guy who was not long ago was praising the educational system in Cuba for God’s sake.

CLAY: You’re right.

BUCK: Fred, great call, and thank you so much for bringing that perspective, and I appreciate your patience ’cause I know you were on hold for a long time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: There are some Republicans who are pointing out the lack of oomph, I guess you could say, the lack of real heart in this issue from the Democrat side of things. I know some of you are gonna have feelings about Marco Rubio and what he’s done in recent years. But Marco Rubio is a guy who’s very solid on the Cuba question, that’s for sure.

RUBIO: It’s now been over 12 hours since over 32 cities in Cuba, brave people, have taken to the streets to protest against communist, Marxist, evil tyranny and so far not a word, not a word, not a statement from Joe Biden, from the vice president, from the White House. Not a word.

Why is it so hard? Why it so hard? Why are they so uncomfortable just coming forward and condemning this evil, socialist-Marxist regime? It’s been 62 years while these people have been out there suffering, and what is it so hard about coming forward and saying, “We’re not gonna tolerate brutality”?

“We’re not gonna tolerate bloodshed. Do not step forward, Cuban military, and attack and hurt your own people. If you do it, you’re going to be held accountable, and we’re gonna put the full force of the United States government behind these efforts for freedom — and we stand with the Cuban people.” Why can’t Joe Biden just say that?

BUCK: Just Clay, to update everybody, that was before he wanted that out and he was putting this out on social media, Marco Rubio, before the White House, the statement which you read on the air. But that the White House statement reads like a U.N. resolution about the temperature of the lattes they’re serving here in New York City at the headquarters. That’s not gonna do anything.

CLAY: That’s exactly right, and that’s why I think we’ve had such a good discussion here, which is for a long time we’ve been saying the “right” thing. And I’m putting “right” in quotation marks, because it’s just words, right? What is the step that the United States government could take to help this kind of protest eventually topple a totalitarian, communist dictatorship?

And that is the question that I think many people listening to us right now –certainly of Cuban ancestry, Cuban-Americans, people with families still back in Cuba — have been asking for decades. And I think that’s the real challenge. It’s hard to get a different result by doing the same thing. And that is, I think, what is so frustrating to so many people.