Former President Jimmy Carter recently paid a visit to Cuba where he was treated more as a friend than as a former head of state. The Cuban government has now released a translation of his appearance on Cuban television. His performance was, well, disgraceful.
Beginning with a statement to the people of Cuba, he had nothing to say of the lack of freedom in Cuba. He made brief mention of his visit with American Alan Gross, who is being held in a Cuban jail for providing support for democracy activists in Cuba, but then immediately equated him with the so-called Cuban Five, who are in jail in the US for spying. Carter apparently sees no difference between an American who is working on a transparent U.S. government funded democracy project and guys spying for the Cuban dictatorship. Indeed, Carter referred to them as “the five Cuban patriots” and explained that he had met with their mothers and their wives. He never called Gross a patriot. He went on to make clear that he had privately petitioned both George W. Bush and Barack Obama to release these spies.
Fidel Castro, he told the Cuban people, “is my personal friend,” and he complained that “some radical leaders in my country” don’t want warm diplomatic relations between the two countries. When it comes to global warming, he praised Castro “as a promoter of this issue” but said that the US was clearly not doing enough. In short, Carter had nothing positive to say about the United States. (Even Barack Obama’s United States!) Cuba, on the other hand, was a warm place with wise leaders.
And to think that he is a former POTUS.