Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Donald Trump mixed it up Thursday night over relations between the United States and Cuba and the future of a potential embassy in the island that has been ruled by a dictatorship.
Rubio said relations won’t truly change until Cuba becomes a democratic and remains an anti-democracy communist dictatorship. He also argued that relations should not move forward as long as Cuba continues to hold captive political dissidents.
The comments contrast with past statements from Donald Trump, who has called the opening of relations with Cuba “fine.” That put him in some kind of agreement with President Obama, although Trump denied it.
“I don’t agree with President Obama. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. What I want is a much better deal to be made be” Trump said. “As usual, with our country, we don’t make good deals. We don’t have our right people negotiating. We have people that don’t have a clue. As an example, I heard recently where the threat was made that they want reparations for years of abuse by the United States, and nobody’s talking about it.”
“They’ll end up signing a deal and we’ll get sued for $400 billion or $1 trillion. All that stuff has to be agreed to now. We don’t want to get sued after the deal is made,” Trump said. “So I don’t agree with President Obama. I do agree that something… should take place. After 50 years, it’s enough time, folks. But we have to make a good deal.”
When pressed on whether he would continue diplomatic relations and have an open or closed embassy in Cuba, Trump said he would “probably have the embassy closed” until the U.S. made a “really good deal” with Cuba.
However, Rubio told Trump that there is no need to close down the embassy, as it’s the same building as the U.S. consulate, and the embassy could simply be redesignated.
“The embassy’s the former consulate, it’s the same building, so it could just go back to being called a consulate. We don’t have to close it that way. Second of all, I don’t know where Cuba’s going to sue us, but if they sue us in a court in Miami, they’re going to lose,” Rubio said to laughs throughout the debate hall.
“And on the issue of a good deal, I know what the good deal now is already codified. Here’s a good deal: Cuba has free elections. Cuba stops putting people in jail for speaking out. Cuba has freedom of the press,” Rubio said, rattling off a few other parts of a good deal, adding “then we can have a relationship with Cuba.”
