Americans must keep an eye on Cuba and its protests and realize that there are "forces in Washington trying to impose communism" in the United States, Cuban-American preacher Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, said on Newsmax Thursday.
"We have a Marxist regime" with President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and members of the House "squad," Cruz told Mercedes Schlapp, who is guest-hosting Newsmax's "Wake Up America" this week. "They are Marxists and they want to impose a Marxist regime upon America."
Cruz was asked about the ongoing protests in Cuba and about remarks made by Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who admitted in a televised address Wednesday that failures by the state played a role in the country's unrest.
"We have to gain experience from the disturbances," he said, reports NPR. "We also have to carry out a critical analysis of our problems in order to act and overcome, and avoid their repetition."
But Cruz called the Cuban leader's words "just rhetoric."
"The communist regime in Cuba has lasted 62 years, and it is total oppression," said Cruz, who left Cuba in the 1950s. "With having so long communism in Cuba, many people don't know what it was before."
But now, the country is poverty-stricken, he pointed out, as the average salary is $30 a month and "people are starving. There is suppression everywhere. Freedom of speech is gone. Pastors are persecuted. The church has had to go into what is called home churches, with maybe 15, 20 people meeting at a church in different homes."
Cruz said the protests encourage him and remind him of when millions of people protested in the streets of Romania in 1986 and the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in just 10 days.
"That's going to happen in Cuba," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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