Democratic Senator Blasts Obama Visit to Cuba in Floor Speech

Democratic Senator Blasts Obama Visit to Cuba in Floor Speech (The Washington Free Beacon)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) assailed President Obama for his upcoming visit to Cuba during a Senate floor speech on Thursday, saying the Castro regime had failed to improve human rights and Obama was effectively legitimizing a dictatorship through his actions.

Obama will be the first sitting president in nearly a century to visit Cuba on Sunday as part of his administration’s push for normalized relations. A bipartisan band of critics have blasted Obama for rewarding the Cuban regime rather than first ensuring the island was reformed.

“When we anticipate that we will see a photograph of the President of the United States laughing and shaking hands with the only dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, I will be thinking of Berta Soler of the Ladies in White and her fellow human rights and democracy advocates, when she testified before Congress last year,” Menendez said. “She said in her testimony: ‘Our demands are quite concrete; freedom for political prisoners, recognition of civil society, the elimination of criminal dispositions that penalize freedom of expression and association, and the right of the Cuban people to choose their future through free, multiparty elections.’