the regime. the question is how far does that filter and what is best for the cuban people going forward. rather than focus on the sordid past that castro has been a part of, my hope is the future that can come to the cuban people will be one of change, dramatic differences from what has been, that raul castro will use this opportunity to institute the kind of changes that president obama was hopeful would be the case with his opening to cuba. none of that has materialized. one can only hope this pike a turning point in which change can come to the cuban people. we ll have to see what happens. senator martinez, thank you very much. my pleasure. up next, the clinton campaign joining a recount effort in several key states. president-elect donald trump is calling the efforts ridiculous and a scam. we ll talk about it, next.
system actually hurts, because, as we know from the congressional budget office, you would be looking at deficit reduction thanks to comprehensive immigration reform. the reality is that there is economic impacts there. there was still a lot of intramural fighting. one thing i agree with senator martinez on her is that there was no clear winner. jeb performed as well or as bad as everybody else. that means the middle class was the losers last night. when you have an entire field up there talking about how bad increasing the minimum wage would be it shows they don t understand the struggles that people are living with every day. they don t understand what a family goes through when they want to send their kids to college. what people are coming out of college riddled with debt for their entire life have to go through. that s what made last night s debate bad for the middle class and bad for the american people. senator, one thing they were all pretty much in agreement on last night is
answering the question, say that one of the problems with the deal is that it doesn t address chinese manipulation of its currency. the u.n. he says that the u.n. is between 15% and 40% undervalued against the u.s. dollar. this is really an outdated talking point. in the past couple years the chinese have let the currency float a little bit more and it has appreciated against the dollar. the international monetary fund says it s basically fairly valued. it s also important to say that in the tpp, in the actual agreement there is no specific issues on currency manipulation. that s kind of a side issue. so that s also important to mention. olivia. thank you very much. it s great seeing you. with me now from milwaukee is a communications director for the democratic national committee and former republican senator mel martinez. gentlemen, thank you for being with me. good morning, josé. listen to this.
freedom and liberty and human rights. they look for america to be on their side, not for america to be gutting geopolitical deals or making it easier to sell tractors to the government there. we should be clear about these things. it s important it s a personal and emotional issue, particularly for many floridians. i m joined by bill martinez, the first cuban-american to ever serve in the senate. senator martinez, nice to see you, sir. good morning, chuck. good to see you. well, where are we on this? where are you on this? you ve been i think you were fairly you were okay with the president s initial decision with opening up travel for cuban americans to go back to cuba. where are you on embargo itself? is it really an effective tool in the foreign policy toolbox? well, chuck, i think that while travel restrictions for the family can see one another, someone who s lived in cuba as a child and still has family
country of i don t know, what, 2 billion people, cuba, a country of 11 million, the comparisons are just not the same. they are geopolitical important state to us across the world. cuba is in our own backyard. and as i say, they ve been fomenting and exporting behavior. i want to go back to the place i was born. i understand. i yearn for the day when things can be different. well, and i think that s what we all hope for down there, more importantly. because, look, they have horrible, horrible political prisoners there, we have allen gross there, so it is important this is not that is not lost on us. senator martinez, a pleasure to talk with you. nice to see you. thank you. always good to see you, chuck. and i have to tell you, it s time to say go noles. oh. well, only in one-half of my household. all right, sir. thanks. i now want to go to the political impact of this. adam smith, political editor for