Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared to be very warm and friendly with comments directed at Cuban dictator Raul Castro during his “trade mission” yesterday, referring to the man the BBC describes as a hard-liner and militant as “courageous,” a man who has “show(n) leadership.”
The “courageous” dictator and brother of Fidel Castro, is currently harboring members of FARC leftist guerillas who very recently murdered 10 Colombian soldiers and wounded 17 others in a terrorist attack on a military base.
New York State Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin (R) openly wondered why the statements about Castro weren’t headline news.
Via Capital New York:
The governor reappeared publicly after lunch in a second-floor meeting room at the Parque Central, where the two dozen business leaders who joined his trip met with roughly the same number of Cuban counterparts.
Cuomo sat in front a trio of flags — American, Cuban and New York — and introduced Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, State Senate minority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins as well as Senator Jeff Klein, leader of the Republican-allied Independent Democratic Conference. Cuomo announced him as the chamber’s “co-leader.”
Cuomo stood after his introduction and declared his lunch with Diaz “very exciting and productive.” He said Cuba’s president, Raul Castro, was “courageous” and “showed leadership.” The top Cuban official was Mary Lou B’Hamel, who supervises North America for the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Trade. She said the government “highly appreciate[s] the interest you have shown.” [Emphasis added]
Henry Gomez of PJ Media recently described other ties to terrorism – including domestic efforts – that Raul Castro and his brother share:
The Castro brothers continue to harbor international terrorists from Spain’s Basque separatist group ETA and Colombia’s Marxist rebels FARC, as well as American domestic terrorists from groups like the Black Liberation Army.
Nothing has really changed on this front. It’s estimated that 70 U.S. fugitives are being harbored by Cuba, including Joanne Chesimard (AKA “Assata Shakur”), a convicted cop killer.
You know who’s not courageous? Governor Cuomo – Who, when asked about extraditing the known cop killer Chesimard, replied that he did not have a “specific position” on her status.
She’s a cop killer; how hard is it to take a position against that?
As for Raul Castro, a 2013 BBC profile describes him as having worked together in the Cuban revolution with his brother since the 1950s. Raul, they explain, “can claim an earlier commitment to socialism than his brother” and was viewed as more of a “hard-liner” than Fidel.
“In the first few months of the Revolution,” the BBC reports, “he was kept out of the limelight because his militancy was thought unpalatable.”
Where once dictators who harbor terrorists and kill their opposition were thought “unpalatable,” our progressive leader in the Empire State now refers to them as “courageous.”
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
