Full Comment - Trump’s plan for Cuba isn’t what you’ve been told

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00:00:47.300 As the world's eyes are still on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, closer to home the Trump

00:00:52.060 administration is putting the slow squeeze on another country, one within our hemisphere,

00:00:57.320 one many Canadians are familiar with and have visited on vacation.

00:01:01.260 I'm talking, of course, about Cuba.

00:01:03.460 Hello and welcome to the Full Command Podcast.

00:01:05.660 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:01:07.080 And today, we're trying to understand what the Trump administration is trying to accomplish in Cuba,

00:01:12.780 a country just 90 miles from American shores.

00:01:16.360 The United States has a large Cuban-American population dating back to the Kennedy administration.

00:01:21.940 And since then, they've thrown their weight around within both parties to influence policy.

00:01:26.780 So as Donald Trump tries to use economic might to force change in Cuba, what is his end goal?

00:01:32.720 Well, we're going to see with Cuba. Cuba's another story. Cuba's been a terribly run

00:01:37.680 country for a long time. It's got a bad system. It's been very oppressive, as you know. And we

00:01:43.240 have a lot of great Cuban Americans, all of whom just about voted for me. And they were treated

00:01:48.480 very badly. In many cases, family members have been killed. They've been beaten up and mugged

00:01:53.600 and like terrible things happened in Cuba. 0.90

00:01:56.900 And Cuba's a failing nation. 0.76

00:01:59.100 And we're going to do this. 0.99

00:02:01.020 And we may stop by Cuba after we're finished with this.

00:02:04.160 But Cuba is a nation that has been horribly run for many years by Castro.

00:02:10.300 The easy thing to do would be to say,

00:02:12.000 well, Trump is doing this for votes among Cuban-Americans

00:02:14.900 or saying he has an incoherent strategy.

00:02:17.760 He doesn't know what he's doing.

00:02:19.460 And that's what many media outlets are doing.

00:02:21.800 But to try and understand what Trump is looking to accomplish and what might come next, we reached out to people who are generally aligned with Trump on Cuba to try and understand the thinking and what the end goals might be.

00:02:35.880 Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

00:02:40.200 His career spanned the globe with Agence France-Presse and the Wall Street Journal when he was a journalist.

00:02:46.020 Then he had a stint in the State Department in the Bush administration before joining the Heritage Foundation.

00:02:51.440 We caught up with him at his home near Washington, D.C.

00:02:55.580 So, Mike, a lot of people looking at what's happening with the Trump administration in Cuba.

00:02:59.760 Some people feel that it's confusing.

00:03:02.820 They don't understand.

00:03:04.520 What is your read of what the Trump administration is attempting to do in Cuba?

00:03:10.620 Are they attempting regime change?

00:03:12.600 Are they attempting to bring Cuba into the fold? 1.00

00:03:15.760 Are they just being mean, inhumanitarian people?

00:03:19.020 No, I mean, the mean inhumanitarian people are the members of the Cuban regime. I think the first option that you gave, regime change, I think that is very clearly what's going on. 0.62

00:03:32.900 I was asked in Congress last year by, I think, a senator from Hawaii whether they were trying to do regime change.

00:03:43.100 Marco Rubio answered very quickly, yeah, that's codified.

00:03:47.940 The Helms-Burton Law codifies our desire for regime change in Cuba.

00:03:52.360 So every, I would say every administration since Eisenhower, with perhaps with the exceptions of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, but every other administration, including Clinton, have sought regime change in Cuba.

00:04:07.380 So this is no difference.

00:04:11.720 The way that they're doing it, though, it appears to be economic pressure that the Cuban regime isn't actually responding to.

00:04:21.500 the way you would have thought.

00:04:23.080 They seem to be digging in.

00:04:25.780 Yeah, that is, I mean, that's a good point that you bring up.

00:04:27.900 The question is, how long can they dig in?

00:04:32.560 A lot of them, a lot of the people supporting the regime

00:04:37.400 are doing it not for ideology anymore,

00:04:40.920 but because they live very well off the regime.

00:04:44.720 There's a cadre that is there that lives very well.

00:04:48.240 The question is, so that includes the generals.

00:04:51.500 all of whom were appointed by Raul Castro.

00:04:54.060 It was Raul Castro who gave them their stars

00:04:56.680 and it was Raul Castro who's really the leader of the country.

00:05:01.160 Miguel Díaz-Canel is not really a leader.

00:05:03.940 He's an administrator.

00:05:06.340 However, the question that I hear is the carnals.

00:05:10.140 How happy or unhappy are the carnals?

00:05:12.180 They cannot rise.

00:05:15.400 And if the regime is not able to give them the benefits

00:05:20.540 because the regime has no money or has less money,

00:05:24.260 how long can that situation last?

00:05:26.940 So, you know, we've seen countries other than the U.S.

00:05:32.200 attempt to bring in oil.

00:05:33.820 I believe the Trump administration even allowed the delivery of some oil.

00:05:40.000 That is problematic, the fact that they are running short of oil,

00:05:43.380 but also food and their tourism.

00:05:46.760 That has been their lifeblood.

00:05:48.580 You know, folks from Canada, from Germany, from the U.K., going to Cuba for vacations has been the lifeblood of their economy.

00:05:56.120 That has to be hurting them.

00:05:58.240 Yeah, I mean, since I have a Canadian audience, let me just tell you that I think it's shameful that anybody would go to Cuba under its present conditions there.

00:06:08.320 And a lot of it is, as you know, I'm not saying, I'm not breaking news here.

00:06:11.760 A lot of it is sex trade.

00:06:13.580 A lot of it is sex tourism. 1.00

00:06:14.880 You know, the poor Cuban women try to do what they can, some of them. 1.00

00:06:25.300 The food, Cuba is an incredible fertile place. 0.92

00:06:30.160 Cuba was, you know, you can, if a little bit of earth gathered on your windowsill,

00:06:38.720 you know, a couple of days later, you'd have a flower growing.

00:06:40.980 That Cuba cannot feed itself is a testament to socialism. Cuba is now importing sugar. Cuba was a powerhouse for centuries since Cuba started trying sugar cane as an industry in the early 1600s, in 1600, in fact.

00:07:03.560 And soon that was a thriving industry until the late 60s and 70s when that ran into the ground.

00:07:11.040 And now Cuba is importing its own sugar.

00:07:13.680 So, yeah, that's where we are.

00:07:16.360 Cuba has to import food because it doesn't grow enough.

00:07:20.680 In the executive order that President Trump signed January 29th of this year, he outlined a number of issues related to Cuba.

00:07:32.020 and said that Cuba is, I find the policies, practices, and actions of the government of

00:07:40.000 Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat. You see the size of Cuba, you see the 0.65

00:07:46.620 weakness of their economy, and you would say, how on earth can Cuba be a threat to the United

00:07:53.960 States? But it goes on to describe how they have aligned themselves with numerous hostile

00:08:00.000 countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States,

00:08:04.660 including the government of the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China,

00:08:08.520 the government of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. To all those Canadians that you mentioned who are

00:08:13.680 going to vacation at these resorts in Cuba, I think a lot of them would be shocked at those

00:08:20.840 last two, especially Hamas and Hezbollah, also the government of Iran, maybe not Russia and maybe

00:08:26.060 not China. Can you unpack a bit of that for us? What are the relationships? We'll get into

00:08:32.920 Venezuela in a minute because there was a big connection between the Maduro regime and Cuba,

00:08:37.540 but what is it that is alarming the Trump administration enough that they feel they

00:08:44.500 need to take these actions against Cuba when an awful lot of the rest of the world isn't seeing

00:08:51.380 it either because they don't want to or perhaps it's not as big as the trump administration saying

00:08:58.320 unpack this for us explain it yeah i actually published a big paper on this uh four months ago

00:09:06.120 and i made exactly the point that you're making brian that most of the people most most people

00:09:11.920 in the world look at cuba and look at a really a dinosaur an ideological dinosaur that has with

00:09:17.500 with a crumbling architecture, a crumbling infrastructure.

00:09:23.440 Havana is falling apart.

00:09:24.500 It looks like it's been bombed.

00:09:27.600 And say, well, how can this be a threat? 0.98

00:09:29.800 Actually, Cuba is a threat because it does align itself 0.73

00:09:32.800 with all the adversaries that we have. 0.98

00:09:36.720 You named all of them there.

00:09:38.860 Iran, China itself has four intelligence bases

00:09:44.160 listening to electronic signaling.

00:09:47.400 One of them is in the town, the biggest one is in the town of Behuqa, outside of Havana.

00:09:53.220 It's actually a town that was, one of my ancestors was the first mayor of Behuqa in 1713.

00:10:00.080 And that is a, from there, China can listen to electronic signaling covering the entire southeast United States.

00:10:10.180 That's an area with a lot of military bases, an area with a lot of, you know, we have launching of spaceships into space in that area.

00:10:24.160 And China can get all that information.

00:10:27.100 So, but explain what that does, what that means, listening in on electronic signaling.

00:10:32.480 You know, I'm actually trained in communications in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve, so I have a sense of it.

00:10:39.840 But a lot of people won't know what these listening posts are for, and every country has them, but explain what they're doing.

00:10:50.020 Are they picking up phone calls?

00:10:51.340 Are they picking up what are supposed to be encrypted messages?

00:10:56.620 What are they actually doing with that base that's pointed at the southeastern U.S.?

00:11:01.380 Yeah, I mean, all of that, all of the – actually, Brian, it sounds like you should tell us what they do.

00:11:06.520 You know this a lot better than I do.

00:11:08.880 I'm not as trained as you.

00:11:11.580 All I know is what I've been told by CSIS.

00:11:15.300 They're the ones who have done a lot of work on this.

00:11:18.400 And yeah, it covers stuff that we think it's encrypted.

00:11:22.460 You know, we use WhatsApp and we use Signal

00:11:24.080 and we think we're safe.

00:11:26.380 And no, not if China is listening in.

00:11:29.200 It's not safe because it's picking it up.

00:11:32.980 So, yeah, I mean, that is a national security threat.

00:11:36.640 But if we have all these military bases and, you know, the Southern Command is down there, and if China is able to tap into all of this intelligence, that's actually a big national security threat to the United States.

00:11:51.600 so let's talk about venezuela because when january 3rd the operation to get maduro happens

00:12:02.020 um i'll plead ignorance and perhaps i should have known this uh that was the first i heard that

00:12:10.220 maduro was actually protected by cuban mercenaries cuban guards how deep was the relationship between

00:12:19.840 the Castro regime in Cuba and the Maduro regime in Venezuela?

00:12:24.560 I'm very happy to answer that.

00:12:26.040 But let's go back to the previous question as well, because we left out some of the heinous 0.66

00:12:30.040 things that Cuba does that are not listening posts. 0.99

00:12:35.280 Cuba is one of the reasons why Cuba is such a threat. 0.94

00:12:40.020 Cuba is actually deeply, deeply involved in instability here in the United States. 0.83

00:12:44.080 For example, let me jog your memory back to April 2024 when we had all these demonstrations, all these pro-Hamas demonstrations on U.S. campuses, and we had the takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.

00:13:04.300 So about two hours before those people went to Hamilton Hall and broke into Hamilton Hall and took it over very violently, they had been at the headquarters of the People's Forum in midtown Manhattan, where they were being instructed by a Cuban agent, Manolo de los Santos, who's the head of the People's Forum, who has trained in Cuba for many, many years.

00:13:26.960 he gave them a speech they had workshops on what to do and then those people then they broke up

00:13:33.220 and they said now we're going to give you enough time to get to Colombia and they marched on April

00:13:37.300 30th and took over and and it wasn't just that the reason I'm zeroing in focusing on the takeover

00:13:44.340 on April 30th of Hamilton Hall is because that was the most graphic but the whole demonstration

00:13:49.400 had been orchestrated by these pro-Cuba groups and in fact that September and I can share it

00:13:55.920 with you later if you want. That September, the foreign minister of Cuba met with the activists

00:14:01.800 in Harlem at the Apollo Theater. I have the video. I have the video of that meeting where

00:14:11.320 you can see Bruno Rodriguez meeting and talking to the activists. So a lot of the stuff that

00:14:17.700 happens on our street is really programmed in Cuba or people trained by Cuba. Cuba, for 67 years,

00:14:29.360 the 67 years of the Castro dictatorship, has this pattern of training our adversaries trying to 0.89

00:14:37.480 create harm to us. Now, on the question of Maduro, yeah, that was very well known. We kept talking

00:14:45.080 about it. In fact, at one point, I think that one regional expert, a former foreign minister of

00:14:53.080 Mexico, put the number, I think, at the height of 15,000 Cubans in Caracas running things. You

00:15:00.080 talk about people who have been tortured or interrogated in Caracas, and they said that at

00:15:06.240 some point, somebody with a Cuban accent would come in and take over the interrogation. And that

00:15:13.820 it's not new let's not forget that john mccain talked about being interrogated by cubans in

00:15:17.900 vietnam so that is something that the cubans have uh have have mastered and we did know that the

00:15:24.300 people completely around uh maduro were not venezuelans maduro after all was when chavez

00:15:31.640 was dying uh there was a question of of appointing someone else to replace him and that someone else

00:15:38.500 was Diosdado Cabello, today the head of the National Assembly, and the Cubans said, this

00:15:44.780 is going back to 2013, 2012, when Chavez died.

00:15:50.560 The reason I mentioned both here is because there's a question of when he actually died,

00:15:54.780 whether he died in December of 2012 or whether he died later on in 2013, no one knows.

00:16:00.260 Um, and, and, and, and Raul Castro then already in, even though Fidel hadn't died, Raul was,

00:16:09.040 Raul Castro said, no, no, no, it has to be, it has to be, uh, Maduro. It has to be Nicolas

00:16:14.380 Maduro. People describe Maduro as a simple bus driver. Uh, no, he, I mean, he was a bus driver

00:16:21.100 at one point, but actually he was somebody also trained in Cuba by the Cubans and the Cubans

00:16:26.740 saw him as an asset. They did not trust the Venezuelans

00:16:30.640 to keep him safe, nor did they

00:16:34.660 trust Maduro not to flee.

00:16:38.000 And I just remember the foreign minister's name, Carlos Castaneda,

00:16:42.680 again, a regional expert. He and others have said that

00:16:46.380 two years ago, Maduro actually wanted to leave.

00:16:51.180 He wanted to say, well, yes, I'll leave.

00:16:53.740 And the Cubans said to him, no, Mr. President, you are the president of this country. You go back to the presidential palace and act presidential. You're not leaving. And so there's a question of whether Maduro was kept in place, was being safeguarded by Cubans or whether because he did not trust the Venezuelans or actually the Cubans were making sure that he would not leave Caracas.

00:17:20.000 You're making it sound like Cuba had colonized Venezuela.

00:17:22.900 That's actually, that is often said by members of the Venezuelan opposition who deeply dislike that Cuban presence in Caracas.

00:17:36.120 And everybody talks about this.

00:17:38.460 It's well known that Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro became colonies of Cuba.

00:17:47.280 And it's, I mean, we can talk about this for a very long time.

00:17:49.800 I don't know how long you want to talk about it, Brian.

00:17:51.260 But it goes back to Chavez and the real admiration that he had for Castro.

00:17:56.880 You know, Chavez saw Castro as the lodestar of revolutionary ideology in the hemisphere.

00:18:02.900 Castro, on the other hand, having good authority, somebody, I don't want to mention his name,

00:18:07.380 but a Nobel Prize winner that I know that met with Castro, and they were talking about

00:18:11.880 Chavez and Castro.

00:18:13.240 I'm talking about Fidel Castro now.

00:18:14.720 He spoke very derisively of Chavez, saying he's not a cultivated man at all. 0.99

00:18:19.740 He's very ignorant. 0.96

00:18:22.000 But Chavez, on the other hand, adored Castro. 0.99

00:18:24.760 And he set up this relationship.

00:18:27.380 And that's when he started sending, that's when Venezuela, it was under Chavez, that Venezuela started sending Cuba all this oil for free or at subsidized prices.

00:18:40.080 And Cuba, having lost its sugar daddy, the Soviet Union, in 1991, all of a sudden, 10 years later,

00:18:47.000 It goes through a special period, that's what it was called in the 90s, but then it finds Venezuela, which is oil-rich, willing to support the Castro regime.

00:18:58.760 So, yeah, no, that's not new.

00:19:00.580 People do talk about it as a colonial relationship.

00:19:03.580 How detrimental is it for the Cuban regime, for President Diaz-Canel to have lost that Venezuelan oil pipeline?

00:19:20.280 It's everything. It means everything. And that's the reason why we can have the situation that we have now where the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are making the demands that they're making.

00:19:34.900 If Venezuela, if Maduro was still in place, Cuba would still be receiving all the oil that it needs, and there would be no problem.

00:19:43.480 The same family and regime continue to repress the population and stay in power as long as it wanted to.

00:19:51.420 So there are talks. That's been confirmed.

00:19:53.620 the um the cuban regime uh president diaz canal says not no regime change but clearly that is

00:20:02.840 what secretary rubio has said they want that's what president trump wants um is it realistic

00:20:10.300 that we could see some change or what are the negotiating points that the united states is

00:20:14.820 actually pushing for with the trump administration perhaps accept the current people staying in power

00:20:22.800 if there were certain changes made?

00:20:25.160 Because, you know, I think people that,

00:20:29.420 even people that supported removing Maduro

00:20:31.620 were a bit surprised that he left

00:20:33.560 the rest of the regime in place in Venezuela.

00:20:36.440 So could he leave the regime in place

00:20:39.260 if enough demands were met in Cuba?

00:20:42.940 So Rubio has been very, very clear on this point.

00:20:46.900 He has said, we're not going to have economic change

00:20:50.700 unless we have a change in the political regime

00:20:54.560 because the reason why the economy is in shambles

00:20:58.940 is because socialism doesn't work.

00:21:01.480 It didn't work in Germany.

00:21:02.840 It's not going to work in Cuba.

00:21:04.780 Is it actually socialism anymore, though,

00:21:07.140 or is it kleptocracy in Cuba?

00:21:10.120 Well, it's socialism in the sense that private enterprise

00:21:12.700 is not allowed, right?

00:21:14.640 There is no price discovery mechanism.

00:21:17.200 there's no we don't have a supply and demand because because people are not allowed to sell

00:21:25.200 their own cows they don't own cows they don't own boats they cannot go on the on the ocean and fish

00:21:30.300 because you cannot buy a boat and you cannot own a boat and the reason you cannot own a boat

00:21:35.060 is because people the government just assumes that if anybody with a boat will flee

00:21:39.080 So, you know, people

00:21:41.660 Relatives of mine who have gone to Cuba

00:21:45.660 Say, these are non-Cuban relatives of mine

00:21:48.280 Who have gone to Cuba say

00:21:49.200 It's the weirdest thing

00:21:50.900 You look at this white ocean

00:21:52.960 And there's nothing floating on it

00:21:55.520 There are no ships, there are no boats

00:21:57.320 There's nothing

00:21:57.920 And so it is a socialist

00:22:02.600 Very much a socialist regime

00:22:04.160 So let's go back to the talks

00:22:08.620 because this is very interesting.

00:22:11.000 Rubio has also said that the only people

00:22:13.700 who know anything about the talks

00:22:15.460 are him and President Trump.

00:22:17.820 I do believe him, Brian,

00:22:20.240 because I think Rubio is in a very tough situation

00:22:23.740 in that he doesn't know

00:22:25.260 if there are any more Cuban spies

00:22:28.400 at the State Department.

00:22:29.760 Let's not forget that we had David Manuel Rocha

00:22:32.620 who was at the State Department

00:22:34.540 who is now in prison.

00:22:36.040 He was discovered to be a Cuban spy.

00:22:38.160 We have Kendall Meyer, who was arrested, discovered about 15 years ago, one of the most senior Cuban spies.

00:22:45.960 I knew Kendall when I was at the State Department, and he's now behind bars.

00:22:50.140 And you had Ana Belen Montes, who was at the Department of Defense, now renamed the Department of War.

00:22:58.420 And she just got released. 0.71

00:23:00.280 She spent about 30 years in prison.

00:23:02.460 So Cuba has likely still other spies inside the State Department.

00:23:07.140 So Rubio has to play his cards very close to his vest.

00:23:10.900 So we don't know, Brian, the reality of who he's talking to or what's being said.

00:23:18.080 What we do know is that there is a segment that is briefing the press,

00:23:24.160 and the press runs from these stories, saying what you just said,

00:23:27.560 saying, no, they're negotiating.

00:23:29.620 Rubio's negotiating with Raul Castro's grandson, Raul Rodriguez Castro.

00:23:37.140 He's negotiating with him, and we could have an economics-only change

00:23:42.140 in which the Castro family is allowed to remain in place and in power.

00:23:46.400 And Rubio has completely denies this, and he gets very angry every time

00:23:50.960 the press runs through these stories because he says,

00:23:54.500 look, if you're listening to anybody else who tells you that they know,

00:23:58.400 they're lying to you.

00:23:59.580 They have an agenda, and they're lying to you.

00:24:01.840 The only people who know are me and President Trump.

00:24:04.420 And in this town, I'm in Washington right now, in this town, it's very hard to get information on what's taking place in these talks.

00:24:14.600 In terms of, let's go back to the wider network that we were talking about at the beginning.

00:24:21.360 In that executive order, President Trump mentioned Russia.

00:24:24.200 He mentioned China.

00:24:25.260 He mentioned Iran.

00:24:26.780 You add on Cuba and Venezuela.

00:24:28.200 these two people that don't pay attention to geopolitics seem like very unconnected events

00:24:35.080 why is he starting a war on iran why is he going after cuba why is he going after venezuela

00:24:39.540 connect them for me mike well these are all uh adversaries of the united states people who make

00:24:45.200 life uh very hard for us i mean more than russia and china russia and china are the big adversaries

00:24:51.700 Let's be clear about that. And China is probably going to be the main adversary of the United States and the entire West, also of Canada in this century.

00:25:03.260 However, Iran and Cuba can make life very difficult for the United States. Cuba, for reasons I've already discussed, and we can discuss them further, Iran has a series of proxies, whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's the Houthis, whether it's Hamas. 0.88

00:25:19.660 these are all proxies of Iran. These are not separate entities. This is Iran.

00:25:26.620 So I think what Trump is trying to do is getting rid of these historic problems 0.87

00:25:32.820 that the United States has had, one for 67 years, Cuba, but the other one for, what is it, 79?

00:25:40.760 That's almost 50 years. No, hang on.

00:25:44.980 47 years.

00:25:46.060 Yeah, that's right. 47 years. So one is 67, the other one is 47. And Trump wants to solve these. Now, whether he will or not, it's another issue we're seeing right now. Apparently, the streets are removed. They're announcing that it is open today, which is good news, I suppose, for all of us.

00:26:05.040 And I personally think that the job in Iran, that Trump needs to finish a job in Iran, and that that job is to make sure that the moolahs are no longer in power. 0.96

00:26:20.140 But these guys have all been acting together, working in coordination, supporting each other. 0.94

00:26:25.320 Haven't they been?

00:26:26.180 Yeah.

00:26:26.620 I mean, there's 15,000 Cubans in Ukraine, fighting Ukraine. 0.61

00:26:31.220 People, it's amazing to me how Canadians and Europeans and even Americans who proudly have the Ukrainian flag next to their icon, next to their persona on Twitter, or they fly these flags in their front yard, will turn around and also be very pro-Castro, be very pro-Cuba. 0.67

00:26:50.220 You know, Cuba is an ally of Putin. Cuba is a strong ally. The reason why Putin insisted 0.78

00:26:58.360 on getting a ship of oil into Cuba, which he did last week, is because Putin sees Cuba as

00:27:06.540 what it has been, this unsinkable aircraft carrier 90 miles from our border, 90 miles from the U.S.

00:27:13.300 coast. And as I said, 15,000 Cubans reportedly are now in Ukraine. So again, I question the

00:27:21.940 people who feel that Ukraine, and I'm very pro, I think Ukraine should be a free and independent

00:27:28.820 and sovereign country. I think Putin is a really bad person. I don't want to use a

00:27:36.800 language on a family podcast um but but but but um you can't be pro-ukraine and pro-cuba at the

00:27:46.400 same time or pro that's right you could be pro-cuba you cannot be pro-ukraine and pro-castro

00:27:50.600 at the same time all right mike gonzalez thanks so much for the time today oh well brian it's

00:27:56.660 been an entire pleasure when we come back author activist and castro regime critic cumberto

00:28:02.640 Fontova on where the Cuban-American community is and his views on the end goals for Trump and Cuba.

00:28:11.600 There were so many missed opportunities to catch this before the devastating thing happened.

00:28:18.360 A third of them we found literally in the phone book. These people were not afraid.

00:28:24.100 They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them. They knew they had escaped justice,

00:28:29.020 that they were going to die in their beds.

00:28:31.040 When I give talks at law schools is that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority, and it's empowering a minority that's a guild across the country, and it's a fairly elite guild, and the guild is lawyers.

00:28:40.000 Families who were split by referendum and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum because they were so angry at each other because of the emotions on both sides.

00:28:52.660 The reason he was assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space,

00:28:57.460 but because the gun that he was creating had other applications that made him and the gun very dangerous.

00:29:08.020 It's finally here. A new season of Canada Did What?

00:29:11.660 Post-media podcast that revisits the big Canadian political events you might think you remember

00:29:17.040 and tells you the real story you never knew.

00:29:20.100 I'm Tristan Hopper.

00:29:21.640 The voices you just heard are from our brand new season two.

00:29:25.440 We will unpack some of the pivotal moments that helped define our country,

00:29:29.180 often without a vote, usually without a plan,

00:29:31.780 and sometimes without anyone admitting what they've done.

00:29:35.580 We'll find out how Canada became a welcoming paradise 0.72

00:29:38.620 for untold numbers of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War. 0.85

00:29:43.220 We let them build monuments to their wartime exploits

00:29:45.980 and even ended up honoring a Nazi fighter in the House of Commons.

00:29:50.040 And I'm sorry to say that none of that happened by accident.

00:29:53.800 We'll bring you the little-known story of a troubled Canadian rocket scientist

00:29:57.460 who turned to a sinister life of selling giant guns to terrible people.

00:30:02.900 And if that sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too.

00:30:06.260 You'll hear the behind-the-scenes story of Quebec's attempted secession from Canada

00:30:10.080 and how very close we came to a political crisis

00:30:13.320 that would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

00:30:16.580 You'll hear about how the much-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:30:20.360 turned into something its creators never wanted,

00:30:23.500 and how many of the most extravagant warnings about the document

00:30:26.700 were all quickly proven true.

00:30:29.320 And you'll even hear about how authorities bungled multiple chances

00:30:32.940 to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in our country's history

00:30:35.900 and then proceeded to pretend it never happened.

00:30:39.400 These aren't dusty history lessons.

00:30:41.520 There are stories about power, ambition, madness, and the things about Canada that a lot of people would rather ignore.

00:30:48.340 But not you. You won't want to miss an episode.

00:30:51.620 Subscribe to make sure you get all of Season 2 starting March 2026 anywhere you get your podcasts.

00:30:59.400 All right, any reporting on Cuba that you didn't get from me or the president is a liar.

00:31:05.320 Because they're the only people working on it.

00:31:07.000 Do you still want regime change?

00:31:08.480 I'm just warning you guys.

00:31:09.400 All these sources that are pitching you on Cuba don't know jack.

00:31:12.180 Okay?

00:31:12.600 They're not in the mix.

00:31:13.780 I promise you.

00:31:14.880 They don't know what the hell is happening.

00:31:15.780 Do you want regime change or would you be okay with an economic deal?

00:31:19.700 What do you mean an economic deal?

00:31:21.140 Look, Cuba's economy needs to change

00:31:22.640 and their economy can't change unless their system of government changes.

00:31:25.660 It's that simple.

00:31:26.720 Who's going to invest billions of dollars in a communist country?

00:31:29.960 Who's going to invest billions of dollars in a communist country

00:31:32.460 run by incompetent communists? 0.96

00:31:34.180 Which is even worse than communists. 1.00

00:31:35.440 The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent communist.

00:31:38.560 And so their system of government has to change because they will never be able to develop economically without those changes.

00:31:44.140 Economic change is important.

00:31:45.660 Giving people economic and political freedom is important.

00:31:48.360 But they come hand in hand.

00:31:49.460 They come together.

00:31:50.360 There is Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying exactly what Mike Gonzalez was talking about.

00:31:55.960 According to Rubio, no one knows what's happening in the talks, at least from the American side, other than Rubio himself and President Trump.

00:32:03.420 At the top of the podcast, we played a clip of President Trump saying that after he's done with Iran militarily, the United States might stop by Cuba.

00:32:11.980 A new poll from the Miami Herald shows that among Cuban Americans, the idea of an American military intervention in Cuba is actually quite popular.

00:32:21.520 That's where we begin our conversation with Humberto Fontova, the man behind books such as Fidel, Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, and The Longest Romance, Mainstream Media, and Fidel Castro.

00:32:32.700 We caught up with him at his home in southern Louisiana.

00:32:36.820 Umberto, of course, you know, dealing with Cuba in the sense of American policy, always a lot of it comes back to how Cuban Americans are feeling.

00:32:46.020 I know there's a new poll out from the Miami Herald showing 79% of Cuban Americans in the Miami, Broward County, Palm Beach area say they support military intervention, either to change the regime, which is 36%, or 38% who say they support just for humanitarian needs and 5% who say for both.

00:33:10.280 only 19% oppose a military intervention among Cuban Americans.

00:33:15.360 I think the general public could be different,

00:33:17.820 but does this surprise you that so many Cuban Americans say,

00:33:21.820 Donald Trump, please send in the army?

00:33:24.340 No, it doesn't surprise me.

00:33:26.480 But like I said, what does surprise me is that polls by these same polling agencies

00:33:33.060 back in 2015, 2016, when Obama was making his big push

00:33:38.520 to open up relations with Cuba.

00:33:40.540 Apparently, the polls at those times were always showing

00:33:43.140 a majority of Cuban Americans backing Obama on those initiatives.

00:33:50.160 Now, how can it happen?

00:33:51.780 The only thing that's happened in these intervening 10 years

00:33:55.980 is that even more Cubans have left Cuba.

00:33:59.700 As a matter of fact, more Cubans left Cuba, I believe, in the last five years

00:34:05.920 than came in the early 60s, which is when I came.

00:34:09.540 I came when I was seven years old.

00:34:11.180 So it's interesting that you should have this shift.

00:34:13.960 I don't think it's, it is a shift.

00:34:16.200 I think it's just that there were push polls

00:34:18.480 that were arranged by the Obama administration,

00:34:22.680 the Democrats, to show that Cuban Americans

00:34:25.200 weren't, you know, hardline, anti-comics,

00:34:29.800 and they were backing Obama.

00:34:31.300 Well, for some reason, a couple of years later,

00:34:34.140 most Cuban Americans voted for Donald Trump's hardline anti-communist Cuba on Cuba.

00:34:43.340 I want to read out a quote from Fernand Amandi.

00:34:46.700 He is described by the Miami Herald as an expert on the Cuban community.

00:34:51.860 And he's the president of Ben Dixon, Amandi International,

00:34:54.960 one of the two firms that conducted the poll for the Herald.

00:34:57.640 And he says, it might as well be 1961 again.

00:35:01.080 What the community is saying here is that they're giving a green light to the Trump administration to go in militarily in Cuba and do whatever it is they have to do to remove the regime.

00:35:11.980 800 randomly selected Cubans and Cuban-Americans living in South Florida polled between April 6th to 10th.

00:35:18.900 I mean, this is, you know, saying, hey, we messed up in the Bay of Pigs, but let's go with military again.

00:35:27.700 Do you think he will?

00:35:29.160 No, I don't think so.

00:35:30.580 They're trying to square the circle.

00:35:32.560 By the way, you mentioned the Bay of Pigs.

00:35:34.320 You do realize today is the 65th anniversary of the landing at the Bay of Pigs.

00:35:41.420 Yeah, April 17th of 1961, 1,400, mostly civilian Cubans,

00:35:54.100 mostly without military training, all volunteers.

00:36:00.580 fought against, in the coming three days, 21,000 Soviet-led and trained troops and inflicted casualties of 10 to 1.

00:36:13.700 Of course, they were defeated because the Kennedy administration canceled the air strikes that were to knock out Castro's Air Force.

00:36:24.540 But that's, you know, that's another show that we can do.

00:36:27.100 But it's funny you mention that because that was exactly 65 years ago.

00:36:31.620 And this is, you know, we've got to realize a lot of our listeners are going,

00:36:36.120 good grief, heavens, people, this stuff is 67 years old.

00:36:40.180 Why do you guys keep this grudge against Castro?

00:36:44.760 You know, what is it that you guys, can't you all guys face reality?

00:36:48.920 You Cuban exiles, you hardliners, you're screaming, you're brandy. 0.96

00:36:52.680 Well, let me just go back a little bit.

00:36:55.020 The Castro regime murdered more political prisoners in its first three years in power

00:37:03.060 than Hitler's regime murdered in its first eight years in power.

00:37:09.100 The Castro regime jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate,

00:37:16.920 or at a just about even rate, as did Stalin's regime.

00:37:21.140 The only reason that it couldn't get its hand on most people is because Cuba's population at the time of the Cuban Revolution was 6.6 million.

00:37:29.800 So they couldn't get their hands.

00:37:31.440 But the rate of incarceration and political murders and tortures,

00:37:36.940 the Castro regime jailed and tortured the longest suffering political prisoners in modern history.

00:37:44.920 Many Cuban blacks suffered more and much longer and much more horrible incarceration in Castro's jails than Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.

00:37:56.180 So that's just a little background so our listeners can realize why it is that we hold this grudge against a regime.

00:38:03.280 We're just seeking justice. That's all.

00:38:05.320 well it's a regime that um even to this day with the castro brothers uh gone that i just

00:38:13.200 i it boggles my mind that people in my line of work would go to cuba other than to report if

00:38:22.220 you're going to report as a journalist and show what's on the ground i understand but i know

00:38:27.120 journalists who have gone for vacations there they they jail an awful lot of journalists there

00:38:31.300 you're not allowed to do the kind of work I do

00:38:33.580 of critiquing the government

00:38:35.220 in any way shape or form

00:38:36.760 in Cuba

00:38:37.840 no they vet you

00:38:39.600 the minute you put through the visa

00:38:42.100 that you want to go to Cuba

00:38:43.540 to report

00:38:45.120 you would say in bed in Cuba and so forth

00:38:47.180 they fully vet you

00:38:48.940 and they look at your background

00:38:50.240 and they make sure that what you report

00:38:52.620 is going to be favorable to the regime

00:38:54.780 and that was the whole theme

00:38:56.280 of my latest Cuba related book

00:38:59.200 which is titled The Longest Romance, The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro.

00:39:07.140 This romance started even before Castro and Che Guevara gained power.

00:39:12.580 And as a matter of fact, Che Guevara, thanks to media, in his diaries he wrote,

00:39:18.980 right after they had taken power, his diaries were published, and he says,

00:39:23.620 Much more important than guerrilla recruits for our guerrilla war against Batista

00:39:30.660 were media recruits, especially American reporters, to spread our propaganda.

00:39:40.260 Fidel Castro visited the New York Times in 1959,

00:39:45.100 and he planted a specially minted medal on New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews.

00:39:53.140 And he said, there's a picture of this on the Internet, anybody can Google, he says, without your help and without the help of the New York Times, the Cuban Revolution would have never been.

00:40:05.180 So this gives you an idea of exactly what you're talking about, but it's actually worse than a handful of Canadian reporters. 0.56

00:40:11.880 It's the entire world media, the Castro regime from day one, even before they gained power, they made it a point to cultivate media propaganda.

00:40:22.660 this, essentially propaganda adjuncts in the international media. And the New York Times

00:40:29.120 holds top place, you know, ranks at the top of that. I want to ask you, Umberto, about what is

00:40:37.660 driving President Trump to do what he's doing now, though, from a political point of view.

00:40:42.720 Is it the power of the Cuban and Cuban-American political operations in places like South Miami and elsewhere in the United States that they are a powerful lobby group?

00:40:58.800 Do you think that he's doing this because he believes it's the right thing?

00:41:03.220 Do you believe that it's just part of a larger global reset?

00:41:06.760 How do you view it?

00:41:07.640 What is driving what President Trump is trying to do in terms of trying to bring about regime change, not just here, but Venezuela, elsewhere?

00:41:17.660 I think it's sincere. I really already think sincere. I don't think it's a political...

00:41:22.040 Driven by what, then?

00:41:23.620 By what? Well, he has lived in South Florida off and on for many years, and he has known many Cuban Americans as friends, as business associates, and so forth.

00:41:35.840 In fact, you can go back to 1999, and you can see his comments on the Castro regime, and they're almost identical to what they are now.

00:41:46.880 So I think he's very sincere now, but I think what they're trying to do right now is square their circle.

00:41:52.140 They would love to have a Venezuelan-type solution in Cuba, but it's not going to happen.

00:41:58.900 It's not going to happen.

00:41:59.720 Let me ask you about that, because in Venezuela, they took Maduro and his wife, but they left the rest of the regime in place, and they're not really pushing for political reform there that we can see.

00:42:13.300 Maybe it will eventually come, and I understand the argument that if you'd put in the opposition leader, the military would have killed her, no levers of power.

00:42:23.080 I understand all of that. But if you just do a Venezuelan type operation, then you take out Diaz-Canel and the rest of the regime stays in place.

00:42:37.240 That doesn't really get you to where you want to be, does it?

00:42:41.440 No, of course not. As a matter of fact, Diaz-Canel is nothing. He's been called by some members. He's a decoy.

00:42:47.740 He's out there as a decoy, you know, to accept the lame.

00:42:50.880 The real power is still Raul and his family.

00:42:54.360 And like I say, they're trying to square their circle.

00:42:56.820 I'm guaranteed they're trying to right.

00:42:58.440 But right now, the way things are going in Iran and stuff, I don't think there's going to be any military.

00:43:03.500 As you see from the polls that you look at, people are saying we're not going to accept.

00:43:08.120 The Cuban Americans say we don't want a Venezuelan-type situation here because they know, you know, many Venezuelans live in South Florida.

00:43:16.920 that nothing really has changed substantially in Cuba, you know.

00:43:21.700 And as you see from the poll, Cuban Americans want regime change.

00:43:26.920 They want political change.

00:43:28.640 The regime is saying, oh, y'all can come and invest now in Cuba.

00:43:33.120 You know, after stealing every penny that they own and stuff,

00:43:36.540 they say, yeah, come back.

00:43:38.260 We will welcome you, your investments in Cuba and so forth.

00:43:42.220 And as you can see from that same poll, if you look at,

00:43:44.380 I think it was 2% or 3% said they would be willing to invest in Cuba with the current regime.

00:43:51.940 You've got on the question of over three quarters of Cubans disapprove of the regime being allowed to stay in power in exchange for economic reform.

00:44:04.060 So 7% strongly approve the regime being allowed to stay in power.

00:44:08.460 12% somewhat approve.

00:44:10.840 Then you get to 9% somewhat disapprove.

00:44:13.180 and 69% strongly disapprove. 1.00

00:44:16.620 So you're right, the Cuban-American population 0.97

00:44:18.880 does not want to have that stay in.

00:44:23.980 And on negotiations involving regime leaders

00:44:27.520 and the Castro family members,

00:44:29.320 again, it's more likely to disapprove than approve.

00:44:33.940 So what is your read on what the talks are?

00:44:39.360 I know that Secretary Rubio has said,

00:44:41.540 only I and the president know what's happening. But what, you know, from the conversations you've

00:44:47.820 had with people close to either the Trump administration or contacts you have in Cuba,

00:44:53.000 do you have a sense of what is happening? Yeah, it's just a stalling motion. As a matter of fact,

00:44:59.040 two Russian tankers have been allowed. Supposedly, there was a blockade of oil for Cuba. Well, no.

00:45:06.320 Within the last couple of weeks, two Russian tankers have been allowed to dock in Cuba to unload oil, you know, because for the electric, for the grids and so forth.

00:45:19.180 And plus, supplies are also reaching there from Mexico, food supplies and other things.

00:45:26.460 And so I think what they're afraid of, I mean, what would happen?

00:45:30.380 We want regime change here in the U.S., but in Cuba, what's going to happen with the regime change? 0.86

00:45:36.320 People are going to grab anything that floats Cubans. 0.97

00:45:41.080 And I couldn't blame them for doing it. 1.00

00:45:42.640 But let's face it, is the U.S. population, are we in a political climate right now that we're going to accept tens of thousands of new refugees from essentially what is now a third world country? 0.94

00:45:58.360 That's not going to happen.

00:45:59.500 And I think that is what is holding back the regime, the administration.

00:46:04.580 You see, they would love to have, you know, they're trying to square the circle, and I really don't see a solution. I really don't.

00:46:11.560 What kind of opposition movement is there in Cuba? So let's say that they did get the regime change. Who could take over? Who is in there that could go in and form a government that would have some semblance of authority while you sort out democratic elections and whatnot?

00:46:34.580 No, there isn't anything like that. There are some people, Rosa Maria Paya, in exile, but these are figureheads and opposition brave people, and I admire them, but they have no experience in running a government.

00:46:50.120 And let's face it, Cuba's rot runs a lot deeper than they did Venezuela's, you know, because we had a full-fledged Stalinist revolution, you know, 60 years ago. 0.67

00:47:03.600 Venezuela was a gangster state. 0.86

00:47:08.240 It was a failed, it was a narco-terrorist state. 0.94

00:47:11.220 Cuba had a full-blown Stalinist revolution

00:47:15.500 where the entire Ancian regime was either executed, exiled, or jailed.

00:47:21.860 So we've got to start from scratch in Cuba. 0.89

00:47:24.760 Fortunately, we've got the exile community,

00:47:28.240 many of which are well-heeled and are willing to go back to help rebuild 0.96

00:47:32.820 if the regime changes, but not with the Castro family anywhere near the levers of power. 0.83

00:47:41.740 So I really don't see how you can square this circle.

00:47:45.640 If I was the administration, and Marco Rubio knows this,

00:47:49.220 I mean, he's got his finger on the pulse of the exile community.

00:47:53.280 And like I say, President Trump does too,

00:47:55.720 because he's been down there in Florida for, you know, decades,

00:48:00.000 mingling with Cuban-Americans in business and in social. 0.98

00:48:04.120 So they know, and I think it's just a stalling action. 0.96

00:48:07.220 The United States, the people are in no mood to accept.

00:48:11.040 If there was a regime change, you're going to see a rafter crisis to dwarf, the one from 1994.

00:48:18.600 And the country is in no mood, I think, to accept that kind of thing right now.

00:48:23.500 So it's a difficult, and I'd love to be positive and to have a solution on this show.

00:48:30.000 But I'd rather just be honest and tell you that I don't see how they can square that circle.

00:48:35.460 I want to ask you your reaction to a couple of things, Humberto.

00:48:38.820 One is you mentioned those Russian oil tankers, also some oil getting in from Mexico.

00:48:46.180 When the embargo on oil started and before the Russian tankers and other supplies showed up,

00:48:52.280 suddenly people who had been demanding an end to oil use period, like Greta Thunberg,

00:48:58.460 were demanding that oil be sent to Cuba.

00:49:01.260 How do you react to that?

00:49:04.100 Laugh.

00:49:04.720 I mean, the same we have for 60 years.

00:49:07.040 You know, like I say, that's what my books have done

00:49:09.540 is just pointed out the hypocrisy.

00:49:11.620 My first book, Fidel, Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, 0.92

00:49:15.400 showing the hypocrisy of the Hollywood and celebrity elites. 0.93

00:49:20.360 My latest one showing the media hypocrisy. 0.96

00:49:22.920 It's just, we're just so accustomed to absolute insanity 0.78

00:49:26.640 and absolutely crazy comments coming to Cuba 0.65

00:49:29.280 because Cuba has a record, a terrible record of polluting the environment.

00:49:34.060 I mean, just awful, awful. 0.99

00:49:36.020 There are a few coral reefs on the southern coast of Florida,

00:49:41.200 on the southern coast of the island,

00:49:43.000 and oh, they were played up by environmental groups.

00:49:45.960 My goodness, look how pristine, look how wonderful,

00:49:50.220 look at all of the fish life they've done.

00:49:52.320 And I remember CBS did, or was it ABC?

00:49:55.940 Several of the media people, National Geographic does it all the time.

00:49:59.120 The Discovery Channel, look at these reefs, look at all the fish.

00:50:02.700 Well, that's because it's illegal for Cubans to scuba dive or fish in the area. 1.00

00:50:10.520 The only people allowed to go there is Castro and his foreign buddies. 0.73

00:50:17.360 What's his name? 0.97

00:50:20.300 Depardieu.

00:50:21.540 Yeah, Gerard de Perdue used to go down there all the time. 0.86

00:50:26.660 The founder of CNN, Ted Turner, goes on there, and he would hunt ducks with Cuba along the coast,

00:50:36.680 and he would go scuba diving and fishing with Castro. 0.89

00:50:40.060 Cubans can't go anywhere near that.

00:50:42.560 Here it was when I was growing up in Cuba. 1.00

00:50:45.260 I was born in 1954, but in the 40s and 50s,

00:50:48.560 you know it was a owning a boat and fishing was almost a birthright for cubans well now they say

00:50:55.200 all of the fisheries are for exports and nobody's allowed to go in there well let's see it you know

00:51:00.680 it's easy to have pristine coral reefs when you only let three people visit them you know in 10

00:51:06.080 years i uh i remember several years ago one of our great environmental activists david suzuki

00:51:12.840 here in Canada was suggesting that we adopt Cuban-style agricultural practices because

00:51:18.380 they're better for the environment. And my thought was, well, that will also lead to

00:51:22.860 a complete collapse of production and starvation. So I'm going to say no. But final question for

00:51:30.200 you. What would your message be for all the Canadians who are worried about what's going

00:51:36.800 on in Cuba, not because they want freedom for the Cuban people, but they're worried about their

00:51:42.760 cheap vacation being put off because of the economic and diplomatic political uncertainty

00:51:49.620 down there? Well, I'll say you guys, not you in particular, but Canadians for the last 20 or 30

00:51:57.360 years have been one of the main props for the regime. And I'll repeat, I'll stress again,

00:52:03.740 this regime jailed, as I mentioned, jailed political prisoners at a rate that Stalin

00:52:09.840 And he said, well, yeah, but Umberto, that was 56, he goes, it is essentially the same people running Cuba now that are responsible for these crimes.

00:52:20.820 It is Raul Castro, his nephew and his grandchild, and the Castro family who essentially run what economy there is in Cuba.

00:52:30.500 And Canadians for 30 years, 40 years, have been one of the main props of this regime.

00:52:36.380 And it's interesting because you guys were one of the main opponents of doing business with apartheid South Africa.

00:52:46.160 And I remember even the conservative governments back then were all for an embargo against South Africa

00:52:54.540 while being against an embargo against Cuba,

00:52:58.260 which jailed black political prisoners for longer and more horrible periods

00:53:03.820 than did apartheid South Africa. 0.99

00:53:06.600 So you were being hypocrites when you're going down there, 0.94

00:53:09.420 and you have been one of the main props of a Stalinist regime 0.97

00:53:13.360 for going on half a century.

00:53:16.420 Well, it's a place I'd love to visit, but one that I won't at the moment.

00:53:20.100 So, Umberto, thanks for your time.

00:53:22.320 All right, thanks a lot. Anytime, amigo.

00:53:24.060 The slow squeeze on Cuba will continue for some time,

00:53:27.400 Hopefully, this podcast has given you some insight into what those close to the administration believe is happening.

00:53:34.480 We'll continue to watch developments to see what comes next.

00:53:38.620 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:53:40.860 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:53:42.320 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:53:44.440 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:53:46.240 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:53:48.920 Please make sure you hit the subscribe button, share this on social media, and let your friends know all about us.

00:53:54.280 Thanks for listening.

00:53:55.400 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:53:57.400 there were so many missed opportunities to catch this before the devastating thing happened

00:54:06.440 a third of them we found literally in the phone book these people were not afraid

00:54:11.680 they knew that nobody was effectively hunting them they knew they had escaped justice

00:54:16.960 that they were going to die in their beds when i give talks at law schools is that the charter

00:54:21.180 ultimately is empowering a minority and it's empowering a minority that's a guild across

00:54:25.440 the country and it's a fairly elite guild and the guild is lawyers families who were split by

00:54:30.640 referendum and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum

00:54:36.640 because they were so angry at each other because of her emotions on both sides the reason he was

00:54:41.920 assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space but because

00:54:46.720 Because the gun that he was creating had other applications that made him and the gun very dangerous.

00:54:56.280 It's finally here. A new season of Canada Did What?

00:55:00.100 Host media podcast that revisits the big Canadian political events you might think you remember

00:55:05.480 and tells you the real story you never knew.

00:55:08.640 I'm Tristan Hopper. The voices you just heard are from our brand new season two.

00:55:13.400 We will unpack some of the pivotal moments that helped define our country,

00:55:17.560 often without a vote, usually without a plan, and sometimes without anyone admitting what they'd done.

00:55:23.980 We'll find out how Canada became a welcoming paradise for untold numbers of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War.

00:55:31.660 We let them build monuments to their wartime exploits and even ended up honoring a Nazi fighter in the House of Commons. 0.72

00:55:38.480 And I'm sorry to say that none of that happened by accident.

00:55:42.220 We'll bring you the little-known story of a troubled Canadian rocket scientist

00:55:45.900 who turned to a sinister life of selling giant guns to terrible people.

00:55:51.320 And if that sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too.

00:55:54.700 You'll hear the behind-the-scenes story of Quebec's attempted secession from Canada

00:55:58.520 and how very close we came to a political crisis that would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

00:56:04.720 You'll hear about how the much-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:56:08.800 turned into something its creators never wanted, and how many of the most extravagant warnings

00:56:14.120 about the document were all quickly proven true. And you'll even hear about how authorities

00:56:19.940 bungled multiple chances to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in our country's history,

00:56:24.820 and then proceeded to pretend it never happened. These aren't dusty history lessons. They're

00:56:30.280 stories about power, ambition, madness, and the things about Canada that a lot of people

00:56:35.360 would rather ignore. But not you! You won't want to miss an episode. Subscribe to make sure you

00:56:41.320 get all of Season 2 starting March 2026 anywhere you get your podcasts.

Full Comment - April 20, 2026

Trump’s plan for Cuba isn’t what you’ve been told

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