A radio ad from the Clinton campaign that premiered Monday across South Florida knocks Donald Trump as two-faced for allegedly violating the Cuba embargo then shortly after railing against Castro to a Cuban American audience.
“One Donald comes to Miami to sip cafecito Cubano and talk about the human rights abuses of Castro’s Communist regime,” a narrator says in “Two Trumps.” “The other Donald thinks that because of his money and his business, he’s above the law.”
The ad then summarizes the recent Newsweek report which claims Donald Trump violated the Cuba embargo in 1998. The report revealed that one Trump company paid a consulting firm more than $68,000 to travel to Cuba and explore business opportunities on the island. The firm later instructed Trump executives how to make the expense appear legal by disguising it as a charitable effort, Newsweek reported. The U.S. embargo generally prohibited U.S. companies from doing business in Cuba, with narrow exceptions.
“While our parents and grandparents were fighting the Castro regime both on and off the island, Donald Trump was looking to line his pocket, and even worse, those of the Castro brothers. This is a serious insult to our community,” the ad concludes.
Months after the alleged business activity in Cuba, as a candidate for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination, Trump told the crowd at a campaign stop in Miami that “putting money and investing money in Cuba right now doesn’t go to the people of Cuba. It goes to Fidel Castro. He’s a murderer. He’s a killer. He’s a bad guy in every respect, and, frankly, the embargo must stand if for no other reason than, if it does stand, he will come down.”
Two versions of the ad were released, one each in English and Spanish (called “Dos Caras”). The cost of the ad, as well as its schedule on Florida airwaves, remain unclear.
Over the past 25 years, and especially since the Obama administration began restoring relations with Cuba, support of the embargo has weakened among Cuban Americans.
According to the Florida International University Cuba Poll released in September, just 37 percent of Cuban Americans in the Miami area support the embargo, down from an average of 84 percent in the 1990s.
Hillary Clinton supports ending the embargo on Cuba. Trump has changed his position over the course of his presidential run, as the New Yorker noted recently.
During the primary season, Trump said he supported the Obama administration’s efforts to restore relations with Cuba, but as the New Yorker reported, two weeks ago in Miami, Trump said he would reverse Obama’s actions, “unless the Castro regime meets our demands,” including “religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners.”
Listen to Clinton’s radio ad below:
