Announcing the rollback of President Barack Obama’s diplomatic opening during a speech in Miami, Trump said Cuba had secured far too many concessions from the U.S. in the “misguided” deal but “now those days are over.” He said penalties on Cuba would remain in place until its government releases political prisoners, stops abusing dissidents and respects freedom of expression.
“America has rejected the Cuban people’s oppressors,” Trump said in a crowded, sweltering auditorium. “They are rejected officially today — rejected.”
Though Trump’s announcement stops short of a full reversal of the Cuba rapprochement, it targets the travel and economic engagement between the countries that has blossomed in the short time since relations were restored. The goal is to halt the flow of U.S. cash to the country’s military and security services in a bid to increase pressure on Cuba’s government.
Embassies in Havana and Washington will remain open. U.S. airlines and cruise ships will still be allowed to serve the island 90 miles south of Florida. The “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which once let most Cuban migrants stay if they made it to U.S. soil but was terminated under Obama, will remain terminated. Remittances to Cuba won’t be cut off.
But individual “people-to-people” trips by Americans to Cuba, allowed by Obama for the first time in decades, will again be prohibited. And the U.S. government will police other such trips to ensure there’s a tour group representative along making sure travelers are pursuing a “full-time schedule of educational exchange activities.”
Trump described his move as an effort to ramp up pressure to create a “free Cuba” after more than half a century of communism.
“I do believe that end is in the very near future,” he said.
Trump is running the Miami show like a victory rally—it’s truly cringeworthy—he seems to be celebrating something, I don’t know! It’s bizarre, He’s taking a minor policy change, making a completely ahistoric justification for it, and making a victory speech of some type, -“exposing the crimes of the Castro regime”-, waxing philosophic over the Cuban missile crisis, claiming victory over communist oppression, like he personally spearheaded the Bay of Pigs invasion and liberated the Cubans! Buena Suerte with that.
This “better deal” bullshit refrain is getting really old really fast. The view that everything is transactional and that there are winners and losers in every policy is the product of a simple mind with no ability to grasp higher order thinking.
Boy it is old right now.
What fucking “deal” you fucking lunatic? If there was a deal to be made you’d fuck it up totally you moron.
“He said penalties on Cuba would remain in place until its government releases political prisoners, stops abusing dissidents and respects freedom of expression.”
But sanctions on Russia will be lifted in exchange for nothing (well, except possibly the Presidency.)
“But individual ‘people-to-people’ trips by Americans to Cuba, allowed by Obama for the first time in decades, will again be prohibited. And the U.S. government will police other such trips to ensure there’s a tour group representative along making sure travelers are pursuing a ‘full-time schedule of educational exchange activities.’”
Freedom!!!
it is ridiculous to allow the BATISTA old timers, in MIAMI, to have a say about our current relations with CUBA;if the USA rejects CUBA… guess who is going to move in…CUBA is a sovereign nation…they do not have to ‘trade’ with the USA, exclusively…what annoys me is that CANADIANS travel to CUBA, freely, it is becoming their favourite vacation spot…while AMERICANS cannot visit a country 90 miles away…and our dumb president…has no idea what the BAY of PIGS was all about…or the missile thing…or MARIEL…