Trump claims Obama and Biden ‘betrayed the Cuban people’ as he makes late push for Latino voters

President announces new sanctions targeting Cuban hotel, cigar and liquor industries

Donald Trump on Wednesday contended Barack Obama and Joe Biden “betrayed the Cuban people” via their deal with the Castro government as he makes a late push for Latino voters in Florida and other key swing states.

“The Obama-Biden administration made a weak, pathetic, one-sided deal with the Castro dictatorship that betrayed the Cuban People and enriched the communist regime.  I cancelled the Obama-Biden sellout to the Castro Regime,” the president said during an event honoring US military veterans involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. “Today, we proclaim that America will never be a socialist country.”

The president told invited guests that his administration has done more for Hispanic-Americans than any other chief executive, a claim he makes about every ethnic group and gender.

Mr Trump used the late-morning event ton also announce new sanctions on Cuba, just a few years after the Obama administration moved to build something of a tourism-based partnership with the island country.

The new economic penalties are crafted to prohibit American citizens from lodging at any property that is owned by the country’s government. 

The sanctions also will ban the import of all Cuban-made cigars and liquors.

He used the event to also warn the governments of other Central and South American countries that his administration is pushing back on their “socialism and communism,” and claimed US Democrats want to install that kind of government here.

“My administration stands with every citizen of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in their fight for liberty,” he said in the White House’s East Room. “The courageous veterans here today bear witness to how socialism, radical mobs, and violent communists ruin a nation.”

He used recent protests, which have at times turned violent, to warn socialism is on the march in America – despite his election foe, Joe Biden, working hard to not get dragged too far left by the progressive wing of that party.

“Now, the Democrat Party is unleashing socialist mobs on America," Mr Trump claimed. "Today, we proclaim that America will never be a socialist country.”