00:00Are you sensing any organic effort on the ground in Cuba to actually oust the communist leadership there?
00:08That's not the way to read it. Here's the problem with Cuba.
00:12Well, you guys asked Cubans to reach out to the CIA, so I'm wondering if that's delivered any results.
00:17Well, I wouldn't tell you if I got a result from the CIA.
00:21Because then those people aren't going to be doing very well.
00:23So all I can tell you is this. Here's the problem with Cuba.
00:26The regime there is afraid of giving their people any kind of freedom, economic or otherwise, because they like to
00:32control them.
00:32So what the regime there is trying to do, and they've always done, is they want to have enough economic
00:37activity just so that they are like a third-world country but not a fourth-world country.
00:41But they don't want to lose control over people.
00:43They don't mind if the people don't have a lot.
00:45They just want to make sure that whatever the people have, they depend on them 100% for it.
00:49That's always been the case.
00:50How can they grow economically without losing control over their population?
00:54That model doesn't work.
00:55And all it's led to is millions of people leaving the country of Cuba, including many to the United States.
01:00And that has to change because that instability and that failed state that it's created poses a threat to the
01:06national security and national interest of the United States.
01:09So that's what we're focused on is how can we get the people of Cuba more freedom, political freedom for
01:14certain,
01:15because our embargo on Cuba is codified in statute, and it requires political freedom in order to lift it, but
01:22also economic freedom.
01:23We want the people of Cuba to have what virtually the people of virtually every country in the Western Hemisphere
01:28has,
01:28and that is the ability to go out and make a living for themselves without depending on the government to
01:33provide it for them.
01:34Even more troubling is that despite how bad things are in Cuba, there are insiders in that regime that have
01:40millions and millions of dollars stashed away in bank accounts all over the world,
01:43and that have come to Don, and this is well documented, the military holding company, Gaisa, who's been stealing what
01:49little they have from the Cuban people.
01:50So that also can't continue.
01:53So, you know, ultimately our goal is for Cuba to have a better future, and we're going to do everything
01:58we can to help put it on that path,
02:00but in the end, you know, it will require them to wake up and realize that there is no future
02:04on the path they're on right now,
02:06and, you know, this is a very stubborn group of people over there, but we'll keep working on it because
02:11it's a priority.
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