MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — During a meeting with Cuban exiles on Thursday morning in Miami-Dade County, U.S. Rep. Carlos A. Giménez said there are “cancers” in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba supporting U.S. enemies, but he feels hopeful about change.
Giménez also said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro are “ideologically aligned.”
Giménez added that he had asked Sheinbaum to stop gifting billions of dollars in oil to Cuba, and he has also asked President Donald Trump to ban the U.S.-Cuba remittances and flights.
“All of that puts money in the pockets of the regime,” Giménez said about the Cuban government. “Look, that regime is a cancer, it’s a cancer, and the way that you cure cancer, sometimes the cure is painful, but in the end the patient survives.”
Sheinbaum announced on Tuesday that her government made the “sovereign decision” to temporarily stop oil shipments to Cuba based on a “contractual” relationship. Mexico won’t have elections until 2030. Colombia has presidential elections on May 31 and Brazil on Oct. 4.
Giménez said the regime in Cuba is the weakest he has ever seen, and he was grateful to Trump and State Secretary Marco Rubio for that.
“They understand that the America First policy starts with the Americas,” Giménez said.
U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who also spoke during the meeting, agreed.
“Today we are closer than ever to seeing a free and Democratic Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua,” Díaz-Balart said.
Giménez and Díaz-Balart stood near Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, who hosted the meeting and said Estonia proposed that the European Council, which meets in Brussels, end “the financing” of the regime in Cuba.
“I just spoke with the foreign minister of Estonia. He said that when he brought it up to include in the agenda for the debate, not a single European country objected or argued against it,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said, referring to Margus Tsahkna.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez, Miami Commissioners Rolando Escalona and Miguel Angel Gabela, and Weston Commissioner Fabio A. Andrade were also at Gutiérrez-Boronat’s meeting at the Directorio Democrático Cubano, an organization also known as the Cuban Democratic Directorate, at 730 NW 107 Ave., in Miami-Dade’s Fontainebleau neighborhood.
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