hypocrisy theme for a moment, we do have an example from the white house communications office. when presint oma was meeting16 with the castros, raul, she tweeted, so obama shakes hands with dictator raul castro. what s next shakes hands with north korea dictator kim jong n jong-un. then yesterday this. president trump is the real deal maker and is successfully moving north korea in the right direction with maximum pressure campaign and working towards denuclearization. maximum pressure? maximum pressure is done. once you say he s a lovely guy, funny guy, talented guy.
and depressing. no knowledge of history. it is staggering to realize how on self-aware and the lack of knowledge. laura: the lack of knowledge. i don t recall most of these media elites griping about embracing dictators when barack obama restored ties with the castros in cuba or when he gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the dictators in iran. bogus denuclearization deal. when he held a steak dinner for the chinese dictator. the selective moral outrage here is galling, predictable, and so blatant. when trump talks tough, they say he is a warmonger taking us to war. bu when he gets down guys to sit at the negotiating table and begin to hammer out a piece framework, he is savage for embracing a dictator.
jake tapper, i mean, it s like you watch that, you watch the arc and it s almost like record scratch. it s crazy. the idea that anybody can look at human rights issues, whether it s the castros or are the llahsn iran or kim jong un or the kim family through a political partisan lens of the united ates, if obama does it it s bad or trump does it, it s good, or vice versa, it s stunning to me. human rights issues are human rights issues. what the castros, the kims, what the mullahs do, it has nothing to do with if you like the president at that time. we were covering a lot of the dissidents in cuba and their protests, the lack of freedoms in cuba and there was the exact opposite thing going on where one channel, not cnn and not
diplomats and their families. and that has been i d argue for the united states, a fig leaf. certainly that, you know something happened. but also has been a fig leaf for a gradual ratcheting up of the rhetoric there. julia, let me ask you about the legacy of the castros. is cuba ready for significant liberalization? have they is there a sense in which there were things that couldn t be done while the castros were alive that not just the cuban people, but officials are all just kind of waiting to do? that was that s often been the case in other authoritarian or consumie communist regimes. raul began governing cuba in 2006 and formally in 2018. so we ve had ten good years of a reform agenda by cuban consumist revolutionary standards with the beginnings of an opening to the private sector, more foreign
rhetorical than actual and there s been a curious sonic beem attack which has affected american diplomats and canadian diplomats and their families. that has been argued for the united states a fig leaf that something has that that, but a fid leaf for the ratcheting up of conversation there. the legacy of the cal tro castros, is there a sense things couldn t be done when the castros were alive that not just the cuban people but official are just waiting to do? that s been often been the case in other authoritarian or communist rejet stregimregimes. raul began formally ruling in 2008. we ve had ten good years of a reform agenda by cuban communist