It may have looked bad for Democrat Charlie Crist when his running mate’s old tweet lamenting the death of Fidel Castro surfaced.
But now we know Crist himself genuflected before Cuba’s communist regime.
On Thursday, the Twitter account DeSantis War Room, which supports incumbent Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, posted information about Crist visiting Cuba in 2019.
In a thread, the account noted that Crist was the only member of Congress among eight who were invited to Cuba to make the trip and meet with some of the nation’s communist leaders.
Crist traveled with Austin Durrer, his then-chief of staff who more recently was his campaign manager. Durrer was arrested last month on a domestic abuse charge.
The trip was funded by a group called the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which DeSantis War Room noted “marked Fidel’s death with a statement of ‘pride in the accomplishments of the Cuban revolution.’”
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On its website, the group notes that its “work” is to expose American policymakers “to the impact of U.S. policies throughout the region.”
During the trip to Havana, according to documents posted by the account, Crist met with Cubans who told him about the “negative impacts” of the longtime economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Cuba and America’s restrictions on travel to the island nation.
The tweet thread noted that Crist met with Johana Odriozola Guitart, Cuba’s vice minister of economic planning, who praised the existence of “annoying” breadlines because they “are the expression that there is access for all to these markets.”
In its statement about Castro’s death, the Center for Democracy in the Americas said that Cubans were “ready to move along with their lives and continue the economic and political reforms that have been underway for more than a decade.”
Some reforms.
In July the left-wing group Human Rights Watch released a report about demonstrations made in 2021 by everyday Cubans in response to the government withholding food and medicine.
The outcome wasn’t pretty.
“The Cuban government committed systematic human rights violations in response to massive anti-government protests in July 2021 with the apparent goal of punishing protesters and deterring future demonstrations,” the group said in its report on the anniversary of the protests.
The group’s report “documents a wide range of human rights violations committed in the context of the protests, including arbitrary detention, abuse-ridden prosecutions, and torture.”
Such are the people Crist went to pal around with just two years before this massive crackdown.
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