Opinion by
Max Boot
Columnist
Today at 11:45 a.m. EDT
In the real world, President Biden is governing from the center-left with the support of the majority of the country. His biggest legislative achievement — the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — is so popular that some Republicans are claiming credit for it even after voting against it.
In the right-wing world, however, Biden is either a dangerous left-wing radical or a senile tool of dangerous left-wing radicals — take your pick. At a Phoenix rally on Saturday, former president Donald Trump castigated the “radical left Democrat communist party” and warned that “we are becoming a communist country.” Making these charges stick would represent the triumph of rhetoric over reality.
Cuba offers a case in point. On July 11, prompted by economic shortages and the ravages of covid-19, thousands of people took to the streets demanding the end of its dictatorship. President Miguel Díaz-Canel reacted by deploying security forces to rough up and arrest demonstrators. The next day, Biden issued a strong statement of support for the protesters after “decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”
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This wasn’t good enough for Cuban American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “The protests in #Cuba began over 24 hours ago,” he tweeted the next day. “And you forgot something.” He then hand-wrote on an image of Biden’s statement the words “socialist and communist” to describe Cuba’s regime. The slimy insinuation was that Biden must be soft on communism because he didn’t mention the regime’s ideology. Fellow Cuban American Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) also took up the call on Twitter: “Biden & Harris are unwilling to speak plainly and say the communist dictatorship in Cuba is evil.”
Sean Hannity of Fox “News” Channel went to Miami for a joint interview with Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of Florida in which the three men accused Biden of ignoring Cuban pleas for freedom. Hannity even demanded: “What is the Biden doctrine? To kiss the ass of every single solitary dictator in the world?” Makes you wonder if he got Biden confused with his predecessor, who professed his “love” for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and his admiration for Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The New York Post, another Murdoch outlet, joined in with an op-ed headlined “The REAL Cuba is an utter nightmare — but don’t expect Democratic Socialists to admit it.”
It’s true that some on the left (e.g., Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent) have in the past professed admiration for the Castro regime. But not Biden. He promised during the campaign to lift some sanctions on Cuba, as President Barack Obama did, not because he is sympathetic to its government but because the U.S. embargo has added to the suffering of the Cuban people without dislodging the regime. On July 15, Biden called Cuba a “failed state” and said, “Communism is a failed system — a universally failed system.” Notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric, he has so far made no effort to roll back Trump’s sanctions and has in fact imposed additional sanctions on officials involved in the recent crackdown.
Yet Republicans give Biden zero credit for his hard line on Cuba. They don’t even admit it exists. “Biden sanctioning an already sanctioned regime official in #Cuba is the kind of symbolic but meaningless measure we will continue to see as long as @potus is being advised by people who were drinking mojitos in Havana in 2015 to celebrate the Obama policy,” Rubio complained.
Rubio has a point, sort of. Sanctions are often the triumph of symbolism over substance, but there’s a reason they are a go-to policy of both Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump, for example, imposed sanctions on the governments of Venezuela and Iran for their mistreatment of protesters, because there wasn’t much else he could do. In Cuba there isn’t even an alternative leader to back, as Trump did in Venezuela — and even that hasn’t dislodged the Maduro regime.
Rubio demands action to help Cubans circumvent Internet censorship by providing access to a virtual private network and “satellite/cell service from balloons & other methods.” Both ideas are worth exploring, as Biden has pledged to do, but it’s not clear that either one is practical — which might help explain why Trump didn’t implement them.
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that Trump would be doing anything more to aid Cuban protesters than Biden is doing. There really isn’t much we can do. Rubio, Cruz and the rest must know that, but they don’t care. Mere facts will not impede their effort to paint Biden as pro-Marxist. “Both Washington and Havana are filled with communists who are terrified of millions of patriots rising up to defend freedom!” Cruz recently said.
This is cynical, dishonest, offensive — and potentially effective. If there’s one lesson that Republicans have learned from Trump, it is that insults and innuendos (e.g., “Lock her up!”) don’t have to be substantiated to be damaging. They simply have to be repeated loudly and often. The preposterous accusation that Biden is trying to turn the United States into a Marxist hellhole helped cost him Florida last year — and could cost Democrats again in the future.
Max Boot
Columnist
Today at 11:45 a.m. EDT
In the real world, President Biden is governing from the center-left with the support of the majority of the country. His biggest legislative achievement — the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — is so popular that some Republicans are claiming credit for it even after voting against it.
In the right-wing world, however, Biden is either a dangerous left-wing radical or a senile tool of dangerous left-wing radicals — take your pick. At a Phoenix rally on Saturday, former president Donald Trump castigated the “radical left Democrat communist party” and warned that “we are becoming a communist country.” Making these charges stick would represent the triumph of rhetoric over reality.
Cuba offers a case in point. On July 11, prompted by economic shortages and the ravages of covid-19, thousands of people took to the streets demanding the end of its dictatorship. President Miguel Díaz-Canel reacted by deploying security forces to rough up and arrest demonstrators. The next day, Biden issued a strong statement of support for the protesters after “decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”
ADVERTISING
This wasn’t good enough for Cuban American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “The protests in #Cuba began over 24 hours ago,” he tweeted the next day. “And you forgot something.” He then hand-wrote on an image of Biden’s statement the words “socialist and communist” to describe Cuba’s regime. The slimy insinuation was that Biden must be soft on communism because he didn’t mention the regime’s ideology. Fellow Cuban American Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) also took up the call on Twitter: “Biden & Harris are unwilling to speak plainly and say the communist dictatorship in Cuba is evil.”
Sean Hannity of Fox “News” Channel went to Miami for a joint interview with Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of Florida in which the three men accused Biden of ignoring Cuban pleas for freedom. Hannity even demanded: “What is the Biden doctrine? To kiss the ass of every single solitary dictator in the world?” Makes you wonder if he got Biden confused with his predecessor, who professed his “love” for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and his admiration for Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The New York Post, another Murdoch outlet, joined in with an op-ed headlined “The REAL Cuba is an utter nightmare — but don’t expect Democratic Socialists to admit it.”
It’s true that some on the left (e.g., Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent) have in the past professed admiration for the Castro regime. But not Biden. He promised during the campaign to lift some sanctions on Cuba, as President Barack Obama did, not because he is sympathetic to its government but because the U.S. embargo has added to the suffering of the Cuban people without dislodging the regime. On July 15, Biden called Cuba a “failed state” and said, “Communism is a failed system — a universally failed system.” Notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric, he has so far made no effort to roll back Trump’s sanctions and has in fact imposed additional sanctions on officials involved in the recent crackdown.
Yet Republicans give Biden zero credit for his hard line on Cuba. They don’t even admit it exists. “Biden sanctioning an already sanctioned regime official in #Cuba is the kind of symbolic but meaningless measure we will continue to see as long as @potus is being advised by people who were drinking mojitos in Havana in 2015 to celebrate the Obama policy,” Rubio complained.
Rubio has a point, sort of. Sanctions are often the triumph of symbolism over substance, but there’s a reason they are a go-to policy of both Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump, for example, imposed sanctions on the governments of Venezuela and Iran for their mistreatment of protesters, because there wasn’t much else he could do. In Cuba there isn’t even an alternative leader to back, as Trump did in Venezuela — and even that hasn’t dislodged the Maduro regime.
Rubio demands action to help Cubans circumvent Internet censorship by providing access to a virtual private network and “satellite/cell service from balloons & other methods.” Both ideas are worth exploring, as Biden has pledged to do, but it’s not clear that either one is practical — which might help explain why Trump didn’t implement them.
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that Trump would be doing anything more to aid Cuban protesters than Biden is doing. There really isn’t much we can do. Rubio, Cruz and the rest must know that, but they don’t care. Mere facts will not impede their effort to paint Biden as pro-Marxist. “Both Washington and Havana are filled with communists who are terrified of millions of patriots rising up to defend freedom!” Cruz recently said.
This is cynical, dishonest, offensive — and potentially effective. If there’s one lesson that Republicans have learned from Trump, it is that insults and innuendos (e.g., “Lock her up!”) don’t have to be substantiated to be damaging. They simply have to be repeated loudly and often. The preposterous accusation that Biden is trying to turn the United States into a Marxist hellhole helped cost him Florida last year — and could cost Democrats again in the future.
