Former President Donald Trump released a statement that slammed former President Barack Obama for attending a baseball game with Cuban Dictator Raúl Castro and supporting him as the “Communist Cuban Government” had “imprisoned, beat, and killed the Cuban people.”
“Remember when Obama attended baseball games with the Castros while they imprisoned, beat, and killed the Cuban people,” Trump said in his statement offiering support for the Cubans. He said, “I stand with the Cuban people 100% in their fight for freedom.”
Trump emphasized that “Big demonstrations are breaking out in Cuba and Miami in protest of the Communist Cuban Government.” Trump said not to forget that President Joe Biden and the Democrats last year “campaigned on reversing my very tough stance on Cuba.”
“The Government must let them speak and be free,” Trump added. “Joe Biden MUST stand up to the Communist regime or—history will remember. The Cuban people deserve freedom and human rights! THEY ARE NOT AFRAID!”
In early December 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, Breitbart News reported that Obama’s “normalization” policy towards Castro had put Cuba in motion toward over 10,000 politically-motivated arrests that year.
The report added the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), an NGO on the island, had documented 359 politically-motivated or arbitrary detentions of political dissidents alone, adding to the 9,484 arrests already made so far in the year.
Earlier that year, Obama and his family had attended an exhibition baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays in Cuba. When Obama and Castro arrived at the stadium in Havana, the crowd cheered. The two also did the “wave” at one point before the game and the Cuban attendees.
While Trump was in office, Cuba logged thousands fewer political arrests than under Obama. In 2019, there were only 3,157 documented detentions.
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