Bernie Sanders may have just lost Florida to President Trump

The campaign to re-elect President Trump is going to sleep a little easier tonight.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has cemented his position as the 2020 Democratic primary front-runner, is still defending Fidel Castro, claiming as recently as this weekend that the late communist tyrant was not all that bad. After all, the Vermont senator explained during a Sunday appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes, the murderous Castro regime had literacy programs.

And just like that, Sanders has made winning Florida and its 29 electoral votes a whole lot more difficult for the Democratic Party. Anyone who knows anything about Florida politics knows you never, ever defend the regime responsible for why there are so many Cubans in the Sunshine State in the first place. Yet, here is Bernie Sanders, the man with the clearest path to the Democratic nomination, doing exactly that.

The most damaging moment from Sanders’s appearance on 60 Minutes comes when his interviewer, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, brings up the senator’s past praise for Castro. CBS segues into this portion of the interview by playing archival footage of the senator parroting Cuban propaganda. Sanders can be seen and heard in these old tapes arguing that Castro was welcomed and defended by the Cuban people because “he educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society, you know.”

Fast-forward to the present, and Sanders is still saying the same things.

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba,” the senator told Cooper, “but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know?”

Sanders added, “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”

There are a lot of “dissidents imprisoned in Cuba,” Cooper noted.

A couple of things.

First, “came into office” is just a remarkable euphemism. Castro did not “come into office” so much as he slaughtered his way to power, which he then held onto with a murderous, tyrannical grip until his death in 2016. Castro was an indisputably evil man, whose long, oppressive reign was bloody and terrible from the very start, which makes Sanders either ignorant or himself evil for defending it.

Second, it is hard to imagine that a U.S. senator who is this close to winning his party’s nomination, who has also been in the U.S. Congress for 30 years, would be so stupid as to defend a dictator who is so universally and uniquely despised in the crucial swing state of Florida. Let me remind you that in July 2019, back when Bill de Blasio was still running in the 2020 Democratic primary, the New York City Mayor caught all hell from members of his own party after he chanted a phrase popularized by Castro’s right-hand man, Che Guevara, at a labor protest in Miami.

---

DC murder rate sees astonishing turnaround as Trump team credits federal crackdown

---

US military kills two suspected narco-terrorists in strike on drug-trafficking vessel in the Pacific

---

Fox News Campus Radicals Newsletter: UCLA mob mess, veiled threats of violence and a major win over DEI

---

NFL Legend and Hall of Famer Abruptly Hospitalized, Lawyer and Friend Issues Update

---

Trump Admin Throws Out Obama-Era Gender Rule in Favor of ‘What the Lord Established from the Beginning’

---

Florida Dem filed for re-election days before resignation as House Ethics Committee ramped up pressure

---

Poll Shows Young People Fleeing Major Dem City Due to Cost of Living, Safety, And Jobs

---

NANNY STATE: UK Slaps Nation’s Youth with Permanent Lifetime Smoking Ban

---

Grinning suspect cuffed after alleged fiery street takeover, drag race caught on camera

---

Texas substitute teacher accused of improper relationship with student, alarming parents

---

DHS blames ‘weak’ Biden border policies after piracy-linked Somali illegal immigrant nabbed at northern border

---

Incredible Video: Skycam Catches Massive Tornado Narrowly Missing Oklahoma Town During Violent Storm Outbreak

---

Trump Gives LA Mayor Karen Bass Special Copy of Bible During Oval Office Meeting

---

Mamdani in the hot seat after first veto derails bipartisan effort to combat antisemitism: ‘Disappointed’

---

Transgender lawmaker ‘doesn’t know what a woman is,’ White House says after dig at Trump firings

---

See also  Illegal immigrant accused of attempted rape in Virginia had past charges dropped by Soros-backed prosecutor

“Quoting a murderer responsible for death & oppression in communist Cuba and throughout Latin America is not acceptable. Please apologize,” said Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodríguez.

Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo, added elsewhere, “This is the problem that we run into all the time … The Left has people that are just clueless as hell.”

Local residents were also none-too-pleased, including Bay of Pigs veteran Félix Rodríguez, who told the Miami Herald: “Does [de Blasio] really know who Che Guevara was? I don’t think so. If he does, he’s a f—ing asshole.”

Remember: These reactions were over de Blasio merely quoting a catchphrase commonly attributed to Castro’s chief henchman. Imagine how these and other Florida residents are going to react when they learn that the likely 2020 Democratic nominee said it is “unfair to simply say everything is bad” about the Castro regime because it had literacy programs.

If Sanders manages to clinch the nomination, and he holds fast to defending the men whose political purges and persecutions drove more than one million Cubans to flee by any means necessary to the United States, Democrats may need to have a serious conversation about whether it is even worth the money and effort to compete in Florida.

Story cited here.

Share this article:

Facebook

Twitter