Staff Reports
The House GOP members were on fire as they held a press conference recently, blasting the Cuba visit by some House Democratic “Squad” members. The event was disrupted when Code Pink protesters showed up with their signs, demanding that the U.S. remove Cuba from the terrorist list. This caused quite a ruckus, with the GOP folks allowing the protesters to stick around, much to the chagrin of the conservative representatives.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) was all fired up, saying “I love this” about the protesters. She made it clear that she wanted this kind of freedom for Cuba, where folks can just waltz in with a sign and yap at elected officials. But then she shook her head at the protesters, saying they didn’t know the real deal about Cuba, calling the Castro regime a sneaky snake.
Things got really tense when it seemed like the police were about to boot the protesters, with one of them even having a sign “on top of” the members. But the GOP aides stepped in and let the protesters stay, with a condition that they move to the side. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), who comes from Cuban roots, ripped into the protesters for backing a communist regime, yapping about the freedoms they enjoy in America but are denied in Cuba.
She really laid it on thick, saying the protesters wanted to support a regime that would jail, beat, or even kill them for doing what they were doing there. She called it a shame that the protesters were standing there waving signs in support of a regime that would do all those horrible things to them.
The whole shebang was all about getting the Biden administration to keep Cuba on the U.S. state-sponsored terrorist list, thanks to the odyssey of Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) who snuck off to Cuba in February. They’ve been squawking about how awful the U.S. embargo against Cuba is, and they’re all buddy-buddy with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who claim the trip was about human rights and chatting about the U.S.-Cuba relationship.
But Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) wasn’t impressed, raking Jayapal and Omar over the coals for not pushing for freedom and fair elections in Cuba, and then dissing the 38 other Democrats who voted against backing the right of Cubans to protest peacefully. He gave them a piece of his mind, begging them not to be fools and not to play into the hands of a terrorist regime that hasn’t had a free and democratic election in over six decades.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), the only Cuban-born member of Congress, really let loose, demanding that Jayapal and Omar open their peepers and take in the sorry state of Cuba. He painted a grim picture, talking about crumbling buildings and what he called “modern-day slavery” on the island. Malliotakis chimed in, getting her two cents in about the “socialist Squad” and how they dashed off to Cuba not to chat with the people but to schmooze with the communist regime.
She wrapped things up with a vow to keep battling the “communist sympathizers” who are creeping around in Congress. The Washington Examiner tried to get in touch with the pesky Democrats who gallivanted off to Cuba, but they didn’t have much to say for themselves.
