The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg condemned Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for lauding Fidel Castro’s literacy programs in communist Cuba.
“There’s no way around that. This is as bad as ‘you know who’ saying there were good people on both sides,” the host said on Tuesday’s show. “It’s the same thing.”
Goldberg’s reference to “both sides” was a comparison to President Trump’s controversial comment after the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when the president said there were “very fine people on both sides.”
After co-host Joy Behar said she did not agree, Goldberg brought up Nazi Germany.
“Once you start saying well, you know, Hitler wasn’t so bad because … to a Cuban person, it’s just as bad,” Goldberg said.
Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, told 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper that it was not fair to criticize “everything” that Castro did. “You know, when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?” the Vermont Independent said.
The remarks were quickly criticized by members of the Democratic Party.
“As the first South American immigrant member of Congress who proudly represents thousands of Cuban Americans, I find Senator Bernie Sanders’ comments on Castro’s Cuba absolutely unacceptable,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who hails from South Florida where there is a large community of Cuban exiles and descendants. “The Castro regime murdered and jailed dissidents, and caused unspeakable harm to too many South Florida families. To this day, it remains an authoritarian regime that oppresses its people, subverts the free press, and stifles a free society.”
