MSNBC’s O’Donnell: ‘Cuba’s Problem Is Not Too Much Socialism,’ They Have ‘Too Much Dictatorship’

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” host Lawrence O’Donnell argued that “Cuba’s problem is not too much socialism,” rather it’s that the country is too dictatorial and the dictators who have run the country are economically illiterate.

O’Donnell said, “If the United States had been wise enough to remove the embargo 50 years ago, the Cuban dictatorship would have had no convenient excuse for the deprivations Cuba has suffered. Cuba’s agonies tonight are only partially assignable to the embargo and almost entirely the fault of 60 years of dictatorial government by economic illiterates. Cuba’s problem is not too much socialism, as Republicans would have you believe, it is too much dictatorship, second only to North Korea at this point. The embargo is our longest-running foreign policy mistake and a grotesque mistake at that. … President Biden does not have the legal authority to simply end the embargo, but he does have the authority to issue an order on the basis of emergency humanitarian relief to send one of our great hospital ships to Cuba immediately. Let the U.S. Naval hospital ship Mercy anchor off Havana where Cubans can see it ready to help, and then let the Cuban dictatorship make its decision whether Mercy’s medicine can be delivered to the Cuban people.”

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