Socialist Bernie Sanders told Fox News on Monday night that he did not regret defending murderous communist dictator Fidel Castro or communist China last month, comments that many have said hurt his campaign.
“You mentioned Cuba and authoritarian regimes,” Fox News’ Bret Baier said. “There are few moments in races that seem like turning points and many experts looked at that moment on ‘60 Minutes’ when you talked about Fidel Castro’s literacy program as a turning point in this race.”
“Do you regret at all saying what you said at that time in this race?’ Baier asked.
“No,” Sanders responded. “Look, I have spent my entire life fighting for working people and fighting for democracy.”
“So if you look at a country like China for example, is China a democracy? Of course it’s not a democracy,” Sanders said. “It is an authoritarian country and Xi is taking it in a bad direction but what can we say about China in the last 50 years?”
“Would anybody in their right mind deny that extreme poverty in China has been reduced? Can anyone deny that?” Sanders continued. “Of course not.”
When pressed by Baier about Democrats who responded negatively toward Sanders’ praise of communist Castro and China, Sanders replied, “So, what? Believe me, I’ve got a lot of Democrats who are attacking me as well. Nothing new there.”
WATCH:
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The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/where-does-bernie-sanders-stand-issues-heres-josh-hammer">highlighted</a> some of Sanders&#8217; extreme policy stances in a profile piece last year:
Economy: Sanders holds far-left views on economics that place him barely, if at all, to the right of an authentic European-style socialist. He supports punitive taxation and massive redistribution to mollify the purported scourge of wealth and income inequality in America. He has consistently supported substantial tax hikes on income, capital gains, and estates alike. Sanders supports substantial regulation of the financial services sector and large-scale government spending on infrastructure programs. He has generally opposed free trade due to reasons of labor protectionism. He has been critical of the Federal Reserve for allegedly empowering the wealthy. Sanders supports increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. He has taken a heavy-handed view of antitrust enforcement.
Health Care: Sanders is a longtime support of single-payer socialized medicine, and in many ways is the intellectual progenitor for the current Democratic Party candidate trend of favoring “Medicare for All.” He has often been critical of Obamacare for not going far enough with respect to health care coverage for all uncovered Americans. Sanders has never indicated any willingness to structurally reform fiscally ruinous health care-related entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Immigration: Although Sanders once was sympathetic to restrictive immigration measures due to reasons of labor protectionism, he has emerged over the past decade as a reliable vote in favor of pro-amnesty, pro-illegal immigration policies. He supports a pathway to citizenship for large swaths of illegal aliens. He has often been very critical of the Trump administration’s efforts at border security and immigration law enforcement.
Foreign Policy: Sanders has consistently opposed an aggressive overseas posture for U.S. foreign policy, and has routinely opposed large-scale U.S. military deployments overseas. He has been skeptical of or outright opposed to U.S. foreign policy missions against a wide variety of hostile actors — both state and non-state actors — across the Middle East. Sanders has long been deeply sympathetic toward communist Cuba — including the open <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/heres-the-full-1985-interview-where-bernie-sanders-praised-castro-slammed-reagan-and-more/">praising of Fidel Castro</a> — and applauded the Obama administration’s efforts at détente with Cuba. He supported President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and has usually been more sympathetic to the Iranians and the Palestinian-Arabs than he has been to the Saudis and Israelis, respectively. He supports a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has often been very hostile to Israel’s defensive measures against the radical Islamic terrorism that engulfs the Jewish state on all sides. While running for president in 2016, Sanders <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/US-Jewish-group-slams-Bernie-Sanders-for-misstatements-on-2014-Gaza-war-450507">cited a blatantly false number</a> of Palestinian-Arab deaths that had allegedly resulted from the 2014 Gaza Strip war between the two sides.
Abortion: Sanders is fully pro-abortion, has never voted in favor of any piece of legislation that would restrict abortion, and has recently refused to identify any piece of legislation that he might support that would restrict abortion in any conceivable way. He supports <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1136285225632370688">ending the Hyde Amendment</a>, which has historically banned taxpayer funding of abortion, and has vowed to never nominate anyone to the U.S. Supreme Court who is not adamantly in favor of Roe v. Wade.
Guns: Although Sanders’ tenure in the House was marked by his opposition to various gun control measures, his tenure in the Senate has been marked by consistent support for gun control policies. Sanders supports a federal ban on “assault weapons,” supports “universal background checks” (i.e., background checks even for private firearms transfers), and has often criticized Republicans’ purported fealty to the National Rifle Association. Sanders supports a ban on the undefinable sub-class of firearms referred to as so-called “assault weapons” — a line of thought that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42837/hammer-kamala-harriss-flirtation-banning-all-semi-josh-hammer">lead to the banning of all semi-automatic firearms in America</a>.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-SANDERS-CORONAVIRUS

WATCH: Bernie Doubles Down On Defending Communist Murderer Fidel Castro, China

Bernie Sanders

castro

Communism

Cuba

The Soviet Union reportedly viewed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as a person that they could exploit to promote their propaganda because of his political views and his positive views of the communist nation.
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/world/europe/bernie-sanders-soviet-russia.html">reported</a> on Thursday night that newly discovered documents from Russia showed that Soviet officials sought to &#8220;exploit Mr. Sanders’ antiwar agenda for their own propaganda purposes.&#8221;
The Times noted that the Russian communists sought to exploit Sanders while he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, after he wrote that he wanted the U.S. and the U.S.S.R to “live together as friends.”
&#8220;They also show how the Kremlin viewed these sister city relationships as vehicles to sway American public opinion about the Soviet Union,&#8221; the Times reported. &#8220;Nothing in the documents suggests that Mr. Sanders was the only local American official targeted for propaganda, or even that he was particularly receptive to it, though they do describe him as a socialist. But the documents do show the Soviets’ intensive preparation to use Mr. Sanders’ interest in their country to their advantage.&#8221;
A Soviet Foreign Ministry document discovered by the Times stated: “One of the most useful channels, in practice, for actively carrying out information-propaganda efforts has proved to be sister-city contact.”
The Times noted that Sanders aggressively sought out the sister-city program with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Sanders even led a Burlington delegation to Yaroslavl to try to establish the basis for the sister-city relationship.
&#8220;But the trip wasn’t enough to cinch the sister-city relationship,&#8221; the Times added. &#8220;Mr. Sanders still had to convince Soviet officials in Moscow to grant their approval and allow Yaroslavl representatives to travel to Burlington. He offered glowing reviews in public and ratcheted up his lobbying effort in private.&#8221;
Sanders, still aggressively pursuing the program, wrote a glowing review about the communist nation, saying, “People there seemed reasonably happy and content. I didn’t notice much deprivation.”
Soviet officials coordinated all their responses to Sanders with Soviet officials in Moscow.
The Times reported that the Soviets created a seven-point “plan for information-propaganda work” for their trip to Burlington.
The document said, &#8220;When carrying out propaganda measures abroad, the forms and methods of the information-propaganda work and its concrete contents must be approved by the Soviet Embassy and take into account the Soviet Union’s relationship with the given country.”
Last Month, The Washington Post reported that the Russians were reportedly engaged in trying to boost Sanders&#8217; campaign.
Top officials “have repeatedly warned that Russia has ongoing plans to interfere in U.S. elections and foster divisions among Americans, part of a strategic goal to undermine U.S. standing in the world,” The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html">reported</a>. “Some analysts believe that the Kremlin’s goal is to cause the maximum disruption within the United States, and it throws the support of its hackers and trolls behind candidates based on that goal, not any particular affinity for the persons running.”
The Post highlighted Sanders&#8217; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/03/bernie-sanderss-foreign-policy-is-risk-democrats-against-trump/">connections</a> to Russia early last month:
<blockquote>One issue involves Sanders’s stance toward the former Soviet Union, a record that could undercut Democrats’ ability to criticize Trump for being too close to Russia today.
The documents from the Sanders archives include a letter from Soviet Embassy First Secretary Vadim Kuznetsov in March 1983, congratulating Sanders on his reelection as mayor and thanking Sanders for receiving him in Sanders’s office. Kuznetsov had been in Burlington to attend a conference on nuclear disarmament at the University of Vermont a few days earlier. Neither Sanders nor conference organizers appear to have read a 1976 Time magazine article that identified Kuznetsov as a member of a “Soviet intelligence squad” posing as diplomats to infiltrate U.S. politics.
In 1988, Sanders traveled to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon and forged a “sister city” cooperation program there. Many believe he gave a rosy depiction of conditions there just a few years before the communist system collapsed.</blockquote>

Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Holds Super Tuesday Night Rally In Vermont

USSR Viewed ‘Socialist’ Bernie As Someone They Could ‘Exploit’ To Push ‘Propaganda,’ Report Says

Russia

socialist

Communist Cuba praised socialist Bernie Sanders, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, for his recent praise of the communist nation.
&#8220;Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, prominently displayed a report about Sanders and his praise of &#8216;some of the social programs implemented by the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro,'&#8221; The Miami Herald <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article240626672.html">reported</a>. &#8220;Adding its own analysis of the Democratic race, the newspaper said Sanders seemed &#8216;unstoppable&#8217; in his move towards the nomination.&#8221;
&#8220;Granma and several state media outlets reported the comments made by Sanders in an interview with Anderson Cooper for &#8217;60 minutes&#8217; on Sunday, in which the senator said it was &#8216;unfair&#8217; to say that &#8216;everything is bad&#8217; in Cuba, and praised the literacy campaign implemented by Fidel Castro shortly after he rose to power in 1959,&#8221; the Herald added. &#8220;The report also mentions that Sanders had recognized the role of Cuba in sending &#8216;doctors all over the world,&#8217; another Castro initiative, but incorrectly attributed these comments, made during a debate in the 2016 elections, to the interview with Cooper.&#8221;
The newspaper then attacked Cuban Americans who had escaped the communist nation, writing that Sanders&#8217; “comments sparked the anger of the most extremist sector of Cuban-Americans in South Florida, who oppose any rapprochement with the Caribbean island.”
Sanders&#8217; remarks were widely condemned by Cuban Americans, Republicans, and Democrats who found his praise of a brutal, dictatorial regime appalling.
&#8220;Fidel Castro left a dark legacy of forced labor camps, religious repression, widespread poverty, firing squads, and the murder of thousands of his own people,&#8221; Michael Bloomberg said in a tweet. &#8220;But sure, Bernie, let’s talk about his literacy program.&#8221;
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Fidel Castro left a dark legacy of forced labor camps, religious repression, widespread poverty, firing squads, and the murder of thousands of his own people.
But sure, Bernie, let’s talk about his literacy program. <a href="https://t.co/3Xqu435uoA">pic.twitter.com/3Xqu435uoA</a>
&mdash; Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1231999095214084098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Pete Buttigieg tweeted a link asking for donations, writing, &#8220;Chip in if you don’t want to have to defend Fidel Castro.&#8221;
Tom Steyer tore into Sanders during a CNN town hall, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tom-steyer-unloads-on-bernie-sanders-socialism-never-worked-we-stand-for-freedom">saying</a>, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to look at a dictator in Cuba who’s been there for 60 years, who has really done a terrible job for the Cuban people, who’s an autocrat who’s never allowed dissent or elections and who has done exactly — he’s had the government own the economy and people are hungry and he’s been a cruel controller of the country.  don’t think it’s appropriate to be giving him a lot of compliments.”
“If you’re asking me, will I ever compliment a regime that’s unelected, that rules without the rule of law, that is — that dominates its country without the kind of democracy and — that we have?” Steyer later added. “No, I’m never going to compliment that system. I don’t approve of it. I don’t think it works. I think we stand up for who we are around the country because we’re trying to be the best value driven country in the world. That’s who we are. We should be proud of it and we should never give in to somebody else’s view.”
Left-wing CNN commentator Ana Navarro tweeted: &#8220;I was born in Nicaragua. My parents live there. My husband was born in Cuba. Castros &amp; Ortega are corrupt, anti-American, murderous thugs. They jail, kill, torture, starve, beat, persecute political dissidents while enriching themselves. There is no f***ing bright side. Period.&#8221;
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I was born in Nicaragua. My parents live there. My husband was born in Cuba. Castros &amp; Ortega are corrupt, anti-American, murderous thugs. They jail, kill, torture, starve, beat, persecute political dissidents while enriching themselves.
There is no fucking bright side.
Period.
&mdash; Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) <a href="https://twitter.com/ananavarro/status/1232496056048291841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Bernie Sanders Returns To The Campaign Trail With A Rally In New York City

Communist Cuba Praises Bernie Sanders On Front Page Of State-Run Newspaper

2020 Election

Socialism

This week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) the socialist Democratic presidential front-runner, made waves when he merely reiterated his lifelong warmth toward the viciously evil Cuban communist regime.
Brushing off the human rights violations of Fidel Castro — a man whose revolution ended with the murder or imprisonment of tens of thousands of his countrymen, and decades of impoverishment and repression for millions — Sanders explained: &#8220;We&#8217;re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it&#8217;s unfair to simply say everything is bad. &#8230; When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing, even though Fidel Castro did it?&#8221;
But, of course, Sanders hasn&#8217;t merely praised Castro&#8217;s literacy programs (which, by the way, were propagandistic exploits. Cuba had an 80% literacy rate before Castro&#8217;s coup). Back in the 1980s, Sanders explained that he was &#8220;physically nauseated&#8221; by former President John F. Kennedy&#8217;s &#8220;hatred for the Cuban revolution.&#8221; In 1989, Sanders stated after visiting Cuba: &#8220;I did not see a hungry child. I did not see any homeless people.&#8221; He said that the Cuban people &#8220;had an almost religious affection&#8221; for Castro.
As it turns out, there is hardly a single communist regime of the past half-century for which Sanders has not expressed some level of moral support. This week, Sanders went out of his way to praise China, explaining: &#8220;It&#8217;s is an authoritarian country. &#8230; But can anyone deny — I mean, the facts are clear — that they have taken more people out of extreme poverty than any country in history?&#8221; Naturally, Sanders neglects to mention that China&#8217;s embrace of free trade and profit margin in the 1990s was responsible for that rise from poverty. That would cut against his socialist worldview.
Then there&#8217;s the Nicaraguan communist regime of Daniel Ortega, which murdered thousands. Sanders celebrated the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s (he attended a rally at which protesters chanted, &#8220;the Yankee will die&#8221;), visited Nicaragua and returned to tut-tut Ortega&#8217;s human rights abuses by citing Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s suspension of habeas corpus. It&#8217;s no wonder Ortega has endorsed Sanders for the presidency.
Or how about the Venezuelan regime? Sanders refused to call socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro a dictator as late as last year, and refused to call opposition Juan Guaido the legitimate leader of the country. The Sanders Senate website carried an editorial for years that favorably compared the regime of Hugo Chavez with the poverty record of the United States.
And, of course, there&#8217;s Sanders&#8217; long record of propagandizing on behalf of the Soviet regime. Not only did Sanders visit the Soviet Union for a honeymoon/business trip with his new wife in 1988; he returned and declared that Moscow had &#8220;the most effective mass transit system&#8221; he had ever seen. He then celebrated that the Soviets were moving &#8220;forward into some of the early visions of their revolution, what their revolution was about in 1917.&#8221;
Sanders isn&#8217;t a European social democrat, warm toward Denmark and Norway. He&#8217;s a lifelong communist — a man who declared himself fully on board with the nationalization of nearly every major American industry in the 1970s — and an advocate for anti-Americanism abroad. The fact that it has taken until the verge of his nomination as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee for members of the media and fellow Democrats to take note of this rather important truth demonstrates that the left&#8217;s gatekeeping function has been irrevocably broken.

SHAPIRO: The Worship of Dictators

Fidel Castro

Despite widespread backlash over his praise of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro during an interview with &#8220;60 minutes&#8221; Sunday, Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) doubled down on his positive comments on the brutal communist leader&#8217;s regime during a townhall with CNN on Monday, declaring, &#8220;The truth is the truth.&#8221; But a past fact-check by the Washington Post on the claim Sanders continues to push suggests that the socialist senator&#8217;s &#8220;truth&#8221; about Castro&#8217;s regime lacks key context and relies on highly questionable data from the dictatorial regime.
&#8220;We&#8217;re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it&#8217;s unfair to simply say everything is bad.&#8221; Sanders told Anderson Cooper in an interview with CBS&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; that aired Sunday. &#8220;When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?&#8221;
During the CNN townhall Monday, Chris Cuomo pressed Sanders on the claim. &#8220;So the Democrats who say, &#8216;You don&#8217;t say good things about Fidel Castro — he destroyed freedoms in that country, he played winners and losers and killed them and put them in prison forever. You don&#8217;t give him a pat on the back for anything.&#8221;
&#8220;You don&#8217;t give him— it&#8217;s not a question— Truth is truth,&#8221; said a clearly frustrated Sanders, a line that drew some applause and cheers from the largely left-wing audience. &#8220;Now if you want to disagree with me, if somebody wants to say that — and, by the way, all of those congress people that you mentioned just so happen to be supporting other candidates, just accidentally no doubt, coincidentally. But, you know, the truth is the truth. And that&#8217;s what happened in the first years of the Castro regime.&#8221;
&#8220;There was a lot of folks in Cuba at that point who were illiterate,&#8221; Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-bernie-continues-praise-for-murderous-dictator-castro-praises-communist-china">claimed</a> during the event. &#8220;He formed a literacy brigade, they went out and helped people learn to read and write. You know what? I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing.&#8221;
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Bernie Sanders doubles down on defending Fidel Castro: “the truth is the truth”<a href="https://t.co/bzmv1DmtJH">https://t.co/bzmv1DmtJH</a> <a href="https://t.co/oFrfNKXEOu">pic.twitter.com/oFrfNKXEOu</a>
&mdash; RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1232134881175576576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
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So, is Sanders&#8217; &#8220;truth&#8221; about the Castro regime actually true? While the basic assertion that Castro did implement a literacy program is certainly true, the underlying premise — that the &#8220;massive&#8221; literacy program was massively effective — is an oft-repeated claim about the communist regime that relies on questionable data and leaves out key context that ultimately undermines it.
As explained in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/01/justin-trudeaus-claim-that-castro-made-significant-improvements-to-cuban-health-care-and-education/">Washington Post fact-check</a> of leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s similar claim back in 2016, when Castro came to power, Cuba already had a strong literacy rate. In the areas of education and healthcare, the Post explained, &#8220;many other Latin American countries made far more dramatic strides in the past six decades, without the need for a communist dictatorship.&#8221;
&#8220;A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation,&#8221; Trudeau said in response to Castro&#8217;s death in late November 2016. The Post gave the claim three Pinnochios:
<blockquote>Trudeau appears to accept outdated Cuban government spin as current fact. The reality is that education and health care were already relatively vibrant in Cuba before the revolution, compared with other Latin American countries. While the Castro regime has not let that slip — and given greater access to the poor — it is a stretch to claim Castro was responsible for “significant improvements,” especially more recently.
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Many other Latin American countries made far more dramatic strides in the past six decades, without the need for a communist dictatorship; Cuba simply had a head start when Castro seized power.
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</blockquote>
<div>
<blockquote>
Moreover, the focus on health care and education should not detract from the fact that overall living standards, as measured by gross domestic product, calorie consumption and other measures, have declined significantly under communist rule. Without big handouts from first the Soviet Union and then Venezuela, the economic picture would be even worse.
</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/james-woods-ted-cruz-team-up-to-take-down-sanders">James Woods, Ted Cruz Team Up To Take Down Sanders</a>
</div>

WATCH: Bernie Praises Brutal Communist Dictator Again: ‘Truth Is Truth’; Fact-Check: Here’s The Real Truth

Washington Post

Socialist Bernie Sanders, the current leader in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, doubled down on his praise for murderous communist dictator Fidel Castro on Monday night and went on to praise communist China.
&#8220;I will take one more step down the road from the stigma from some of your fellow Democrats,&#8221; CNN&#8217;s Chris Cuomo said during a Sanders town hall event. &#8220;You said on 60 Minutes this weekend, &#8216;It is unfair to say that everything is bad with the way that Fidel Castro ruled in Cuba.&#8217;
&#8220;Now, Democratic members of Congress who represent Cuban Americans in Florida, obviously you got to win there, they’re attacking your comment as absolutely unacceptable, singing the praises of a murderous tyrant,&#8221; Cuomo continued. &#8220;Response?&#8221;
&#8220;The response was, when Fidel Castro first came to power &#8230; he initiated a major literacy program,&#8221; Sanders falsely claimed. &#8220;There was a lot of folks in Cuba at that point who were illiterate. He formed a literacy brigade, they went out and helped people learn to read and write. You know what? I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing.&#8221;
Sanders then praised communist China, which murdered 45 million of its own people to implement communism and which currently has a million people in concentration camps.
&#8220;China is an authoritarian country becoming more and more authoritarian. But can anyone deny, I mean the facts are clear, that they have taken more people out of extreme poverty than any country in history,&#8221; Sanders continued. &#8220;Do I get criticized because I say that? It&#8217;s the truth. So that is the fact, end of discussion.&#8221;
Cuomo pointed out that Castro was a murderer, to which Sanders again doubled down on his praised of the communist dictator, &#8220;Truth is truth.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
WOW! Bernie Sanders just doubled down on his defense of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro&#39;s literacy program at tonight&#39;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CNNTownHall?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CNNTownHall</a>. 
While also praising Communist China for having taken more people out of extreme poverty than any country in history. <a href="https://t.co/XGv3KHj6z3">pic.twitter.com/XGv3KHj6z3</a>
&mdash; Francis Brennan (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@FrancisBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancisBrennan/status/1232135472362729472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;
The Blaze <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/bernie-sanders-doubles-down-on-his-support-for-communist-fidel-castro-in-60-minutes-interview">reported</a> that Sanders was promoting debunked communist propaganda with his misleading claims:
<blockquote>While it is true that Castro implemented a reading program on the island after seizing power in a bloody revolution in 1959, Cuba’s literacy rate was already high for a Latin American nation at the time and its educational gains have been comparable to those of its peers in the years since.
As attorney Hans Bader noted in an August 2016 article, nearly eight out of 10 Cubans already knew how to read by 1950. This figure was similar to that of Costa Rica, which also achieved 100 percent literacy over the following decades — except Costa Rica and other countries did so without the kind of authoritarian dictatorship that Cubans have endured under the Castro regime for over 61 years.</blockquote>
Sanders also falsely claimed that the Democrats who have attacked him over his pro-communist comments are backing other candidates.
Reporter Josh Kraushaar noted: &#8220;At CNN town hall, Bernie Sanders said the FL Dem members of Congress crIticizing his Castro comments all have endorsed other 2020 candidates. That’s false: Reps. Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell have not endorsed anyone in the Dem primary.&#8221;
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At CNN town hall, Bernie Sanders said the FL Dem members of Congress crIticizing his Castro comments all have endorsed other 2020 candidates. 
That’s false: Reps. Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell have not endorsed anyone in the Dem primary.
&mdash; Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) <a href="https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1232138589112295424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Sanders&#8217; remarks were widely condemned by Republicans, Democrats, the media, and immigrants who have escaped communist nations.
This report has been updated to include additional information.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-ELECTION

Bernie Continues Praise For Murderous Dictator Castro, Praises Communist China

China

Last week, students in a high school history class in Baltimore County, Maryland, got their own dose of leftist indoctrination, as a slide depicted President Trump next to a Nazi swastika and the Communist Party&#8217;s hammer and sickle.
The slide at Loch Raven High School showed Trump with the caption, &#8220;Wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall.&#8221; Below that on the left was the swastika with the caption “been there” and below Trump on the right was was the hammer and sickle accompanied by the caption, &#8220;done that.&#8221; A banner to the side of the slide read, &#8220;Oh that&#8217;s why it sounds so familiar!&#8221;
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The school system said Wednesday that the slide was &quot;not intended to make a political statement&quot; but also noted: &quot;The referenced slide was not part of [AP curriculum resources]&#8230;&quot; <a href="https://t.co/uToqAu8aek">https://t.co/uToqAu8aek</a>
&mdash; FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) <a href="https://twitter.com/FOXBaltimore/status/1230948839131144194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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One parent told <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/questions-raised-after-slide-with-pres-trump-shown-at-loch-raven-high">Fox45</a>, &#8220;The biggest problem is pushing an agenda on 16-year-olds. My understanding is that was just put up and it was left there for everyone to see the whole day. I was told that by another student who said the topic in that class was supposedly world leaders shunning other groups out. I said, &#8216;Is this part of the curriculum?'&#8221;
A spokesperson the Baltimore County Public Schools told Fox45:
<blockquote>This slide was used as part of a lesson in an AP History course. The topics being discussed included World Wars and the attempts by some leaders to limit, or prevent migration, into certain countries. In isolation and out of context with the lesson, the image could be misunderstood.
In our Advanced Placement (AP) classes, which are college level courses, we expect and encourage analysis and discussion around historical and current events even if they are considered controversial. This lesson was not intended to make a political statement. If a student has concerns when discussing a controversial issue, schools have the tools to address the concern and support the student.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/education/bs-md-co-legislators-trump-slide-20200221-etqlbhub2recna2c44itpwu44u-story.html">The Baltimore Sun</a> reported, “Charles Herndon, a spokesman for Baltimore County schools, said students in such advanced high school classes are ‘discerning, intelligent students who are going to be able to draw their own inferences and draw their own conclusions.’”
Baltimore County councilman Wade Kach, who represents the district where the high school is located, countered, &#8220;To even imply that our president is in any way a Nazi or a communist is outrageous. Is this curriculum for AP? Is it a purchased curriculum? Is it one that our school system wrote? Where is it coming from? I just think that it’s irresponsible to post anything like this in a classroom.&#8221;
Dr. Richard Vatz, a professor at Towson University, told Fox45, &#8220;High schools are not supposed to take advocacy positions against presidents. They’re supposed to explain how political advocacy works, if that’s what they’re doing. They’re certainly not to take a position that the president is comparable to these awful leaders of the past.&#8221;
Vatz added, &#8220;If they’re not presenting that as clear, outrageous argument against the president of the United States, then they’re not doing their job. It’s really contemptible. But I want to say it&#8217;s conceivable the teachers are doing a better job than has been communicated to you.&#8221;
&nbsp;

President Donald Trump Opening Ceremony for Veterans Day Parade : NYC

High School Class Shows Slide Of Trump Next To Nazi And Communist Symbols

Donald Trump

Nazis

Self-styled &#8220;democratic socialist&#8221; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination after an easy victory in Nevada Saturday — was met with widespread backlash Sunday after he praised Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Sanders&#8217; praise of the tyrannical communist leader, made on CBS News&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; with Anderson Cooper, echoed another much-criticized compliment of Castro by social justice activist Colin Kaepernick, who famously found himself flooded with boos when he took the field soon afterward in Miami.
Pressed Sunday by host Anderson Cooper about his past positive comments about various murderous communist regimes, Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernies-pro-castro-remarks-backfire-sound-of-bernies-latino-voter-wave-crashing">said</a>, &#8220;You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?&#8221;
Sanders&#8217; praise of Castro is almost identical to that offered by Kaepernick back in 2016, his final year in the league, a few days before a game in Miami against the Dolphins. The then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback was asked by a Cuban-American Miami Herald reporter about a T-shirt he wore to a press conference in August featuring an image of Castro meeting with Malcolm X in 1960 with the caption, &#8220;Like minds think alike.&#8221;
After trying to dodge the question, Kaepernick <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-kaepernick-greeted-deafening-boos-miami-james-barrett">responded</a>, &#8220;One thing that Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system — which we do not do here, even though we’re fully capable of doing that.&#8221;
When the reporter, who came from a family of Cuban refugees, brought up Castro’s tyrannical actions that broke up families, Kaepernick shrugged it off by accusing America of doing the same thing.
&#8220;We do break up families here,&#8221; said Kaepernick, as reported by the Palm Beach Post. &#8220;That’s what mass incarceration is. That was the foundation of slavery, so our country has been based on that as well as the genocide of Native Americans.&#8221;
When the reporter called out Kaepernick for trying to draw a moral equivalence between Castro&#8217;s long history of destroying his own people&#8217;s lives to maintain his political power to the American criminal justice system punishing criminals, Kaepernick said, &#8220;I’m equating the breaking up of families with the breaking up of families.&#8221;
When Kaepernick took the field in Miami a few days later, he was met with deafening boos. Watch via Fox NFL:
<iframe title="Kaepernick Booed By Miami Fans For Praising Dictator Fidel Castro" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3i4QV6ATlcI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Kaepernick’s 49ers went on to lose to the Dolphins <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/playbyplay?gameId=400874654">31 to 24</a>. When the embattled quarterback had a chance to tie the game in the last play, he came up two yards short, inspiring loud cheers and more boos from the Miami fans.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernies-pro-castro-remarks-backfire-sound-of-bernies-latino-voter-wave-crashing">The Daily Wire</a> highlighted, among those who criticized Sanders for his Kaepernick-esque praise of Castro is left-wing CNN commentator Ana Navarro, who tweeted: &#8220;Castro regime’s been in power in Cuba for +60 yrs w/o free elections. They’ve killed, jailed, tortured thousands. They confiscated assets, expelled priests &amp; nuns… And let’s be clear, Cubans weren’t exactly communicating by grunts. Most knew how to read.&#8221;
&#8220;I was in 2nd Grade when Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua,&#8221; she added in a follow-up tweet. &#8220;They adopted Cuban education model. The books/curriculum taught ideological indoctrination. Children had to recite communist, revolutionary, anti-American slogans. That’s how communist teach people to read and write.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Castro regime’s been in power in Cuba for +60 yrs w/o free elections. They’ve killed, jailed, tortured thousands. They confiscated assets, expelled priests &amp; nuns&#8230; And let’s be clear, Cubans weren’t exactly communicating by grunts. Most knew how to read. <a href="https://t.co/kKGM66a8ci">pic.twitter.com/kKGM66a8ci</a>
&mdash; Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) <a href="https://twitter.com/ananavarro/status/1231766703115325441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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When Castro died in 2016, shortly after Kaepernick&#8217;s comments, the Daily Wire provided some highlights of <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/11102/breaking-communist-cuban-dictator-fidel-castro-michael-knowles">Castro’s human rights atrocities</a>, including, the following statistics from the Cuba Archive president:
<blockquote>It is difficult to calculate how many Cuban political dissidents and innocent civilians Castro killed throughout his fifty-year “revolutionary” reign, but Cuba Archive President Maria Werlau estimates 78,000 innocents have died trying to flee slavery under Castro; 5,300 peasant farmers and their children in the Escambray Mountains and at the Bay of Pigs; 14,000 in Fidel’s escapades abroad; 5,600 dissidents in front of firing squads; 1,200 in “extrajudicial assassinations”; and 2,199 documented political prison deaths. Welau notes, however, that these numbers are conservative estimates, and the actual casualties may number an order of magnitude more.</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-third-way-memo-to-democrats-details-bernies-stunningly-radical-political-history-outrageous-support-of-our-enemies">Memo To Democrats Details Bernie’s ‘Stunningly Radical Political History,’ ‘Outrageous Support Of Our Enemies’</a>

Colin Kaepernick

Sanders Praises Fidel Castro; Kaepernick Did Same Thing; WATCH How Miami Fans Responded

Miami Dolphins

Socialist Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, faced widespread backlash late on Sunday night over positive remarks that he made about murderous Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro.
Sanders made the disturbing remarks on CBS News&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; with host Anderson Cooper when Cooper pressed him about positive remarks that he had made about brutal communist regimes in the past.
&#8220;You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did?&#8221; Sanders said. &#8220;He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?&#8221;
Sanders&#8217; claim that Castro &#8220;came into office&#8221; lacks the historical context that Castro was essentially a terrorist who attacked Cuba&#8217;s government; he did not win in an election. Sanders&#8217; claim that Castro had a &#8220;massive literacy program&#8221; is communist propaganda, a point that many critics hit Sanders on in response to his pro-communist remarks.
Among those who fired back at Sanders were people on the political left &#8212; including politicians and people who appear on CNN and MSNBC &#8212; as well as Republican senators and conservative political commentators.
Left-wing CNN commentator Ana Navarro tweeted: &#8220;Castro regime’s been in power in Cuba for +60 yrs w/o free elections. They’ve killed, jailed, tortured thousands. They confiscated assets, expelled priests &amp; nuns&#8230; And let’s be clear, Cubans weren’t exactly communicating by grunts. Most knew how to read.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Castro regime’s been in power in Cuba for +60 yrs w/o free elections. They’ve killed, jailed, tortured thousands. They confiscated assets, expelled priests &amp; nuns&#8230; And let’s be clear, Cubans weren’t exactly communicating by grunts. Most knew how to read. <a href="https://t.co/kKGM66a8ci">pic.twitter.com/kKGM66a8ci</a>
&mdash; Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) <a href="https://twitter.com/ananavarro/status/1231766703115325441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Navarro added, &#8220;I was in 2nd Grade when Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua. They adopted Cuban education model. The books/curriculum taught ideological indoctrination. Children had to recite communist, revolutionary, anti-American slogans. That’s how communist teach people to read and write.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I was in 2nd Grade when Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua. They adopted Cuban education model. The books/curriculum taught ideological indoctrination. Children had to recite communist, revolutionary, anti-American slogans. That’s how communist teach people to read and write.
&mdash; Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) <a href="https://twitter.com/ananavarro/status/1231797010820403200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Left-wing MSNBC frequent guest Fernand Amandi tweeted out a series of videos showing Sanders&#8217; repeated praise for communist leaders.
Amandi tweeted, &#8220;Here’s avowed socialist @BernieSanders talking about how President Kennedy made him &#8216;want to puke&#8217; because JFK stood up to and condemned Fidel Castro’s tyrannical totalitarian regime in Cuba&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here’s avowed socialist <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BernieSanders</a> talking about how President Kennedy made him “want to puke” because JFK stood up to and condemned Fidel Castro’s tyrannical totalitarian regime in Cuba👇🏼<a href="https://t.co/qHXTea08Zp">pic.twitter.com/qHXTea08Zp</a>
&mdash; Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmandiOnAir/status/1231796430345510912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Amandi continued, &#8220;Here is @BernieSanders TONIGHT defending Fidel Castro’s murderous totalitarian Communist regime in Cuba. Democrats, nominating this man will absolutely re-elect @realDonaldTrump and end our Constitutional republic.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here is <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BernieSanders</a> TONIGHT defending Fidel Castro’s murderous totalitarian Communist regime in Cuba
Democrats, nominating this man will absolutely re-elect <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> and end our Constitutional republic. <a href="https://t.co/vAJX2ffbSQ">pic.twitter.com/vAJX2ffbSQ</a>
&mdash; Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmandiOnAir/status/1231738392603451392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Amandi added, &#8220;Here’s a compilation clip of avowed socialist @BernieSanders talking about &#8216;how impressed he is,&#8217; with Fidel Castro’s murderous, communist totalitarian regime in Cuba&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here’s a compilation clip of avowed socialist <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BernieSanders</a> talking about “how impressed he is,” with Fidel Castro’s murderous, communist totalitarian regime in Cuba👇🏼<a href="https://t.co/5xXsXqpeEW">pic.twitter.com/5xXsXqpeEW</a>
&mdash; Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmandiOnAir/status/1231787068914884608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Miami Herald reporter David Smiley wrote: &#8220;That’s the sound of Bernie’s Latino voter wave crashing on the shores of Miami&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
That’s the sound of Bernie’s Latino voter wave crashing on the shores of Miami <a href="https://t.co/FwN64IOlY7">https://t.co/FwN64IOlY7</a>
&mdash; David Smiley (@NewsbySmiley) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsbySmiley/status/1231747588271067136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Former Obama White House staffer Christopher Hale wrote: &#8220;Fidel Castro was a dictator and a tyrant. He spent his regime murdering dissidents, imprisoning gay people, separating families from each other, banning the free and open practice of religion, and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. He’s not worthy of praise.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Fidel Castro was a dictator and a tyrant. He spent his regime murdering dissidents, imprisoning gay people, separating families from each other, banning the free and open practice of religion, and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.
He’s not worthy of praise.
&mdash; Christopher J. Hale (@chrisjollyhale) <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisjollyhale/status/1231764029590376448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Statistician Josh Jordan responded: &#8220;On the same day that Bernie Sanders welcomed an endorsement from anti-Vaxxer Marianne Williamson, he&#8217;s got a 60 Minutes interview where he praises Castro&#8217;s indoctrination&#8230; I mean &#8216;literacy program.&#8217; I can&#8217;t wait to see how this plays with swing voters come November.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
On the same day that Bernie Sanders welcomed an endorsement from anti-Vaxxer Marianne Williamson, he&#39;s got a 60 Minutes interview where he praises Castro&#39;s indoctrination&#8230; I mean &quot;literacy program.&quot;
I can&#39;t wait to see how this plays with swing voters come November. <a href="https://t.co/aABSiAspDo">https://t.co/aABSiAspDo</a>
&mdash; Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) <a href="https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1231751874530988032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Leftist Democrat Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who is highly political and hates the Second Amendment, responded, &#8220;For the record @BernieSanders, Fidel &amp; Raul Castro, their murdering regime, &amp; co-conspirators have never had a redeeming quality, ZERO. They worked on literacy programs in a State that controls everything available for reading, in essence, literacy was a path to indoctrination.&#8221;
&#8220;I remember my high school history teacher trying to feed us the literacy achievement line,&#8221; Acevedo continued. &#8220;My response to him was I would rather be unread than to spend a lifetime reading the communist/socialists propaganda the Cuban government provided.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I remember my high school history teacher trying to feed us the literacy achievement line. My response to him was I would rather be unread than to spend a lifetime reading the communist/socialists propaganda the Cuban government provided.
&mdash; Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) <a href="https://twitter.com/ArtAcevedo/status/1231789783195832320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose father is from Cuba, responded, &#8220;It really makes a difference when those you murder at the firing squad can read &amp; write.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
It really makes a difference when those you murder at the firing squad can read &amp; write. <a href="https://t.co/4DKbSKpI6t">https://t.co/4DKbSKpI6t</a>
&mdash; Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1231762113141649408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Political strategist Rory Cooper responded, &#8220;Say goodbye to Florida. And prepare to spend money in New Jersey. If he’s the nominee.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Say goodbye to Florida. And prepare to spend money in New Jersey. If he’s the nominee. <a href="https://t.co/SgGActS5L7">https://t.co/SgGActS5L7</a>
&mdash; Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) <a href="https://twitter.com/rorycooper/status/1231735754633732097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Democrat Rep. Donna Shalala (FL) tweeted: &#8220;I&#8217;m hoping that in the future, Senator Sanders will take time to speak to some of my constituents before he decides to sing the praises of a murderous tyrant like Fidel Castro.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I&#39;m hoping that in the future, Senator Sanders will take time to speak to some of my constituents before he decides to sing the praises of a murderous tyrant like Fidel Castro. <a href="https://t.co/Iwvmay9LOH">https://t.co/Iwvmay9LOH</a> <a href="https://t.co/KT9sQ0pfkh">pic.twitter.com/KT9sQ0pfkh</a>
&mdash; Donna E. Shalala (@DonnaShalala) <a href="https://twitter.com/DonnaShalala/status/1231760466776657923?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted: &#8220;Likely Dem nominee praised the supposed &#8216;achievements&#8217; Castro regime. 
And he’s wrong about why people didn’t overthrow Castro. It’s not because &#8216;he educated their kids,gave them health care&#8217; it‘s because his opponents were jailed, murdered or exiled.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Likely Dem nominee praised the supposed “achievements” Castro regime
And he’s wrong about why people didn’t overthrow Castro. It’s not because “he educated their kids,gave them health care” it‘s because his opponents were jailed,murdered or exiled <a href="https://t.co/6i41w7zcDe">https://t.co/6i41w7zcDe</a>
&mdash; Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1231779260911800320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) tweeted: &#8220;Shameful ignorance from @SenSanders. The Castro regime has killed &amp; imprisoned dissidents, oppressed its people and propped up murderous dictators like Maduro and Ortega.&#8221;
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Shameful ignorance from <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenSanders</a>.
The Castro regime has killed &amp; imprisoned dissidents, oppressed its people and propped up murderous dictators like Maduro and Ortega. <a href="https://t.co/ROnmWT9oka">https://t.co/ROnmWT9oka</a>
&mdash; Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenRickScott/status/1231767757345230849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

Bernie’s Pro-Castro Remarks Backfire: ‘Sound Of Bernie’s Latino Voter Wave Crashing’

Democratic Socialism

Socialist Bernie Sanders, the current front runner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, praised murderous Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro during an interview on Sunday, arguing that he wasn&#8217;t that bad because he had a &#8220;massive literacy program.&#8221;
Sanders, who faced widespread backlash over his remarks, made the comments on CBS News&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; with host Anderson Cooper when asked about his past support for tyrannical communist dictators.
&#8220;Back in the 1980s, Sanders had some positive things to say about the former Soviet Union and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua,&#8221; Cooper said while narrating during the segment. &#8220;Here he is explaining why the Cuban people didn&#8217;t rise up and help the U.S. overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro: &#8216;…he educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society, you know?'&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it&#8217;s unfair to simply say everything is bad,&#8221; Sanders responded. &#8220;You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?&#8221;
&#8220;A lot of dissidents imprisoned in Cuba,&#8221; Cooper responded.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Bernie Sanders defends his 1980s comments about Fidel Castro in an interview on 60 Minutes. <a href="https://t.co/ySqvQKoiBU">https://t.co/ySqvQKoiBU</a> <a href="https://t.co/lTwuXWp9sA">pic.twitter.com/lTwuXWp9sA</a>
&mdash; 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) <a href="https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1231732950540132355?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The Blaze <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/bernie-sanders-doubles-down-on-his-support-for-communist-fidel-castro-in-60-minutes-interview">reported</a> that Sanders was promoting communist propaganda with his misleading claims:
<blockquote>While it is true that Castro implemented a reading program on the island after seizing power in a bloody revolution in 1959, Cuba&#8217;s literacy rate was already high for a Latin American nation at the time and its educational gains have been comparable to those of its peers in the years since.
As attorney Hans Bader noted in an August 2016 article, nearly eight out of 10 Cubans already knew how to read by 1950. This figure was similar to that of Costa Rica, which also achieved 100 percent literacy over the following decades — except Costa Rica and other countries did so without the kind of authoritarian dictatorship that Cubans have endured under the Castro regime for over 61 years.</blockquote>
Dr. Andy Gomez, a retired University of Miami professor who led the school&#8217;s Cuban Studies department for decades, told The Blaze: &#8220;Contrary to what Senator Bernie Sanders said, the literacy campaign used by the Castro regime was part of their strategic plan to indoctrinate the Cuban people by using education at all levels in support of a Marxist ideology.&#8221;
The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113590852154334404">reported</a> that Castro was a murderous communist dictator:
<blockquote>The Cuba Archive project has already begun the heavy lifting by attempting to document the loss of life attributable to revolutionary zealotry. The project, based in Chatham, N.J., covers the period from May 1952 &#8212; when the constitutional government fell to Gen. Fulgencio Batista &#8212; to the present. It has so far verified the names of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime and the circumstances of their deaths. Archive researchers meticulously insist on confirming stories of official murder from two independent sources.
Cuba Archive President Maria Werlau says the total number of victims could be higher by a factor of 10. Project Vice President Armando Lago, a Harvard-trained economist, has spent years studying the cost of the revolution and he estimates that almost 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship. Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. An estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel&#8217;s revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency.
The archive project can be likened to the 1999 &#8220;Black Book of Communism,&#8221; which documented the world-wide cost of communism, noting that &#8220;wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established it quickly led to crime, terror and repression.&#8221; The Castro methodology, Cuba Archive finds, was much like that used in Poland and East Germany, less lethal than Stalin&#8217;s purges, but equally effective in suppressing opposition. &#8230;
Cuba Archive finds that some 5,600 Cubans have died in front of firing squads and another 1,200 in &#8220;extrajudicial assassinations.&#8221; &#8230;
The heftiest death toll is among those trying to flee. Many have been killed by state security.</blockquote>

Democratic Presidential Candidates Attend Clark County Democrats Rally At The Tropicana In Las Vegas

Bernie Praises Murderous Communist Dictator Fidel Castro: ‘Had Massive Literacy Program’

With the success of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has come the rise in notoriety and popularity of so-called Democratic socialism in the United States.
According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 43% of Americans said that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” for the United States. Regardless of whether or not Americans fully understand what “socialism” means, they appear to support it in some way nonetheless.
Because of this development, I thought it would be vital to speak with Swedish author Johan Norberg, an historian of ideas and CATO Institute fellow, who has written such books as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XOZ612/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1">In Defense of Global Capitalism</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XRXM6CV/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0">Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future</a>,” among others.
His documentary film, “Sweden, Lessons for America?” hit the airwaves in 2018, and can be rented or purchased on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sweden-Lessons-America-Johan-Norberg/dp/B07HP1YGX8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sweden+lessons+for+america&amp;psr=EVGR%7CPBPE%7CPSEL&amp;qid=1581840519&amp;s=prime-exclusive&amp;sr=8-1">Amazon</a> and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/sweden-lessons-for-america/id1455593303">iTunes</a>, and is available for free on <a href="https://youtu.be/jq3vVbdgMuQ">YouTube</a>.
In part one of this two-part interview, Norberg discusses socialism as a philosophy, the rise and fall of Sweden due to its experimentation with socialist ideas, the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders and what that means for the United States, and how even voluntary “libertarian” experiments in socialism have failed.
<blockquote>DW: There are a lot of people who cite the so-called “Nordic model” when advocating for socialism or “democratic socialism.” Is Sweden a socialist nation? And if it&#8217;s not, why do people seem to think it is?
NORBERG: Well, for some reason when I describe Sweden and Swedish policies to American socialists, they hate it; they seem to think that it&#8217;s awful. It&#8217;s a model not just based on an economy of private property and private enterprise, but also specifically, when you look at the business climate, we have low corporate taxes, we have free trade, we have, in many areas I would say, less regulation of business than the United States. We don&#8217;t have the kind of occupational licensing requirements that you do. In many of those areas, we are more fiercely capitalist than the United States. And those don’t seem to be the policies that the [Sen. Bernie] Sanders supporters are in favor of.
And if you also think about the kind of reforms that we&#8217;ve put in place since the 1990s – we&#8217;ve reformed social security, partially privatized it; we’ve opened up the public sector to competition and to freedom of choice; we have a national school voucher system – many different things to encourage dynamism and market forces. And that seems to be the total opposite of what any socialist that I&#8217;ve met is in favor of.
DW: Can you give me the abridged version of what happened in Sweden with the accumulation of wealth, the implementation of socialism, and then the realization that such ideas were not working?
NORBERG: Sure. We have to go back to that because this is the one story that people have forgotten. Their perception of Sweden is in many ways stuck in the 1970s and 1980s. That’s what they remember. This was the brief interlude in Swedish history when we really did experiment with socialist ideals. The background was that we had already made ourselves one of the richest countries on the planet, so we had a lot of money to redistribute. But, that was based on a different model. All that wealth was produced in an incredibly open economic model with a very limited government. Up until the early 1960s, Sweden had lower taxes than not just other European countries, but also lower taxes than the United States. That was the model that gave us all the wealth.
At that point, Swedish socialists and politicians said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s just redistribute this. We&#8217;ve got all of this wealth, so we don&#8217;t have to care about economic orthodoxy anymore.&#8221; And that&#8217;s the moment in time when they doubled the size of government, and jacked up all the taxes, and regulated the labor markets. The problem was that while you can go for some time with the accumulated wealth of yesteryear, eventually, you run out of it. At the beginning of the 1970s, we were 10% richer than other industrialized economies. 25 years later, we were 10% poorer than they were.
So almost at the exact moment when we began to grow the size of government, we began to lag behind all the other economies, and it was really the “Atlas Shrugged” moment in Swedish history because businesses left, entrepreneurs, innovators, our IKEAs and Tetra Paks, our great inventors and sportsman left Sweden because it wasn&#8217;t a hospitable climate for innovation and for starting businesses anymore. It all ended in a terrible crisis in the early 1990s, and that was the moment in time when everybody from the Left to the Right said, &#8220;This is all over. We can&#8217;t do this. We have to reform our systems and get back to the future, to get back to growth.&#8221;
DW: Proponents of socialism will tell you that the ideology works in concept, but simply hasn&#8217;t been implemented correctly. They&#8217;ll set aside Venezuela, which they once championed as a socialist success story, as having been corrupted. What&#8217;s the reality there? Why hasn&#8217;t socialism ever succeeded?
NORBERG: Well, it&#8217;s interesting because they always adore the policies. It&#8217;s just that they don&#8217;t like the outcomes and the results, the consequences. Socialists in Sweden and in the United States adored Venezuelan policies until it destroyed the economy, and had GDP per capita collapse by more than 60%, and people began to starve. At that point they said, &#8220;It&#8217;s not real socialism.&#8221;
So, apparently their definition is not just some kind of socialist policy, but it also has to turn out well – and in that case, they&#8217;re right because it has never been implemented anywhere with good results.
What they did was that they started to regulate the economy in a real way, in a socialist way, that Sweden never did. They began to take over private businesses. They began with drastic price controls because they thought that this was the way to give people cheap bread. But obviously, the result was, as it is everywhere where such things are being implemented, that farmers stopped producing food, and instead, they sell it on the black markets, and they smuggle it out of the country because they can&#8217;t make a living with those kinds of price controls.
They took all the capital, some of which they got because of the price increases in oil (some $1,000 billion over ten years), which could be used to invest in the country, it was all taken by the government to give to their supporters, some for programs and policies, but most of all just wasted in corruption and other stuff, which meant that they didn&#8217;t even invest in the future of the oil industry. So, the output grows smaller and smaller all the time. The moment when prices began to come down to normal levels, they couldn&#8217;t sustain anything anymore, and it all collapsed tremendously – and we all knew this. We could all see this because those policies on socializing businesses and implementing price controls, wasting capital rather than investing it, always ends up in tears – but socialists loved it until they noticed that people began to starve.
DW: What&#8217;s your opinion of socialism as a philosophical concept, and as a form of government?
NORBERG: Lots of people say that the ideas of socialism are wonderful, it’s just that the means were too brutal and awful, and the means corrupted the ends in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Therefore, it collapsed. I would say it is the other way around. It&#8217;s the complete opposite. The problem is that socialism goes against human nature. It is the total opposite of any kind of system of human morality, and that’s why they always end up with walls and barbed wire and machine guns because that&#8217;s the only way to force people to do it. We know this because we&#8217;ve seen so many different experiments with socialism – even libertarian voluntary forms of socialism, like the kibbutz in Israel for example, and they were done by idealists.
No one was forced to work collectively. From each according to his ability, to each according to their needs – but it didn&#8217;t even work there. What happened was that people didn&#8217;t want that regimentation, that kind of collective ownership. People began to demand to do things in different ways and own stuff. They began to realize that when everything was in common, they began to waste stuff. People kept the light up and the heat during night when they didn&#8217;t need it because they didn&#8217;t have to pay market prices. People took their pets to the dining room because food was free. So people began to demand this kind of freedom, and when it came to work, what happened was that as one of the kibbutzim pioneers said, &#8220;It became a paradise for parasites” because if you don&#8217;t get your wage according to what you&#8217;ve done, the effort you put into it, why bother? Why do you ever work at all, in that case?
People of talent then began to leave the kibbutz.
The thing is, had this been Eastern Germany or Venezuela or the Soviet Union, they saw the same thing, and forced people to work, not for gain of a profit, but for the government, they had to force them. They brought out the machine guns. And if people wanted to leave for another place, they built the walls and they killed people who did it. So, it&#8217;s really that the brutal ends were a result of the whole system going so much against the human nature of people who want some freedom, who want some individual responsibility, and who want to gain according to what they do rather than what the governments tell them.
That&#8217;s a very long way of answering the question, but I think that&#8217;s important for the philosophical part of it. It&#8217;s not that the means corrupted the ends. It&#8217;s that the ends would never work, and that&#8217;s why they needed brutal means.
DW: One of the current front-runners in the Democratic primary race is a self-proclaimed socialist. What does that tell you about the political climate in the United States?
NORBERG: Well, it tells you that you should be worried about the state of political discourse in the United States, and I recognize this because this was where Sweden was in the 1970s. We had this tremendous growth; we had big, successful companies bringing in the money and the profits to the economy; and we thought two things: We thought that we were on top of the world and we could do anything. We didn&#8217;t have to care about economic orthodoxy anymore. But also, people began to say, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s unfair. Why should a little group and the few businesses make all this money? Let&#8217;s just redistribute all of this.&#8221;
And especially, I think, if you are young, if you&#8217;re a student, if you haven&#8217;t been actively involved in working to sustain yourself to a large extent or never been involved in business, you&#8217;re used to the money just being there for you, and you also notice all these definite problems and inequalities in the world, and you just think, &#8220;Well, all the money&#8217;s there. Let&#8217;s just do something about it.&#8221; And you forget that, no, the money isn&#8217;t “just there.” We have to create it every minute, all the time, constantly, and the worse we make the situation for those who create that wealth, the less we will get in the long run. It happens again and again in human history, and often paradoxically, it happens when times are good and people think that they can do anything.</blockquote>
In part two of this interview, which will be released on Saturday, Norberg discusses the essentially non-existent distinction between “socialism” and “democratic socialism,” polls suggesting that 43% of American voters are amenable to socialism, how Sweden turned things around, how capitalism hasn’t “failed” as many socialists suggest, and more.
I’d like to thank Johan Norberg for taking the time to speak with me about such an increasingly important topic. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/johanknorberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>, or visit his <a href="http://www.johannorberg.net/">official website</a>.

Johan Norberg

INTERVIEW (Part I): Swedish Author Johan Norberg On The Devastating Impact Of Socialism, And What It Could Cost The U.S.

Economics

As Soviet Union-honeymooning, Sandinista-supporting, Fidel Castro-praising, full-on socialist loon bag Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) emerges as the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/who-will-win-democratic-primary-latest-2020-josh-hammer">undisputed front runner</a> for the Democratic Party&#8217;s 2020 presidential nomination, it nonetheless seems that the median American is rather lukewarm about the possibility of supporting someone for the presidency who holds such historically fringe views.
According to a Gallup <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx">survey</a> released yesterday, &#8220;[m]ore than 90% of Americans say they would be happy to vote for a presidential candidate their party nominated who would be black, Catholic, Hispanic, Jewish or a woman; 80% would accept evangelical Christians, homosexual men, and lesbians; 60-70% are willing to embrace a presidential candidate who is under 40, over 70, a Muslim or an atheist; but only 45% say they would vote for a socialist for president,&#8221; the Jewish Press <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/gallup-90-of-americans-would-vote-for-jewish-black-catholic-hispanic-woman-candidates-but-not-for-a-socialist/2020/02/12/">summarized</a>.
&#8220;Gallup’s bottom line conclusion is: The self-declared socialist Sanders could count on 76% of Democratic voters, 45% of Independents and &#8230;  only 17% of Republicans,&#8221; the Press noted.
As Gallup noted at the top of its report, socialists are the &#8220;one group tested&#8221; who &#8220;receive[] majority opposition.&#8221; After all, &#8220;[l]ess than half of Americans, 45%, say they would vote for a socialist for president, while 53% say they would not.&#8221;
The is fairly brutal news for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and it goes a long way toward explaining why various levers of the DNC&#8217;s broader party apparatus have recently sounded the alarm about a possible Sanders nomination.
“The only thing, the only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party. That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days. … So I am scared to death, I really am,” former top Bill Clinton strategist James Carville said earlier this week while likening Sanders to the far-left Corbyn, as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/end-of-days-carville-warns-dems-about-choosing-sanders-im-not-interested-in-being-in-a-cult">reported</a>.
“There’s a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult. I’m not interested in being in a cult. I’m 75 years old. I’m just not a very cult-y person,&#8221; Carville continued.
Similarly, former Obama-era secretary of state and failed 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had to deny a recent report that he was considering jumping into the 2020 Democratic presidential race in a purported last-ditch attempt to stave off an impending Sanders nomination.
&#8220;NBC News reported on Sunday that Kerry &#8216;was overheard Sunday on the phone at a Des Moines hotel explaining what he would have to do to enter the presidential race amid &#8220;the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole,&#8221;&#8216;&#8221; The Daily Wire also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fing-false-john-kerry-explodes-over-report-indicating-he-may-jump-in-2020-race">noted</a> earlier this month.
Sanders has a lifelong history as a rabid socialist activist, and Paul Sperry <a href="https://nypost.com/2016/01/16/dont-be-fooled-by-bernie-sanders-hes-a-diehard-communist/">argued</a> at the New York Post in 2016 that Sanders is actually best described as a “diehard communist”:
<blockquote>In the early ’70s, Sanders helped found the Liberty Union Party, which called for the nationalization of all U.S. banks and the public takeover of all private utility companies.
After failed runs for Congress, Sanders in 1981 managed to get elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where he restricted property rights for landlords, set price controls and raised property taxes to pay for communal land trusts. …
In 1985, he traveled to [Nicaragua] to celebrate the rise to power of the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government. He called it a “heroic revolution.” …
Sanders also adopted a Soviet sister city outside Moscow and honeymooned with his second wife in the USSR. He put up a Soviet flag in his office, shocking even the Birkenstock-wearing local liberals. At the time, the Evil Empire was on the march around the world, and threatening the U.S. with nuclear annihilation.
Then, in 1989, as the West was on the verge of winning the Cold War, Sanders addressed the national conference of the U.S. Peace Council — a known front for the Communist Party USA, whose members swore an oath not only to the Soviet Union but to “the triumph of Soviet power in the U.S..”</blockquote>

New Hampshire Democratic Primary Debate

Top Pollster: Only 45% Of Americans Would Vote For A Socialist For President

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

Gallup

John Kerry

Leftism

Poll

A far-left professor in Canada is on a tear against the wildly popular kids&#8217; cartoon, &#8220;Paw Patrol,&#8221; which he claims is &#8220;capitalist propaganda&#8221; that leads children away from Marxism, teaching them to critique and distrust government and embrace individualism.
King’s University College professor Liam Kennedy has published an entire treatise on the subject of &#8220;Paw Patrol,&#8221; entitled &#8220;Whenever there’s trouble. Just yelp for help’: Crime, Conservation, and Corporatization in Paw Patrol.”
&#8220;Paw Patrol,&#8221; created by a Canadian toy maker is &#8220;a cartoon, a toy brand, and a merchandising juggernaut, as well as a touring live show. Together, it rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year and has been forging a cult-like preschool following for years,&#8221; according to Fast Company. The show portrays a band of puppies who provide much-needed emergency services &#8212; police, fire, construction, and other public works &#8212; to a fictional town where the dogs in charge are largely incompetent.
&#8220;In the show, Ryder is the ring-leader of the pups, each of whom has a job to do as part of their team,&#8221; according to Post Millennial. &#8216;There’s Chase, the police dog, Marshall, the fire chief dog who can never quite get control of his hose, Rubble, the builder, Skye, who flies a plane for some reason and is the girl pup, Everest, the extreme outdoor adventuring pup, Rocky, the rescue dog, and Zuma, the pup who drives a boat.&#8221;
That&#8217;s a huge problem, per Kennedy: “Paw Patrol, as a private corporation, is used to help provide basic social services in the Adventure Bay community. That’s problematic in that the Paw Patrol creators are sending this message that we can’t depend on the state to provide these services.”
Kennedy is so anti-&#8220;Paw Patrol&#8221; that he won&#8217;t let her daughter watch the show, out of fear that she might grow up to love law enforcement, question authority, and approve of profit (Kennedy, <a href="https://www.thepostmillennial.com/cbc-asks-if-paw-patrol-is-capitalist-propaganda/">Post Millennal reports</a>, came up with his theory after watching hours of the show alone in his office).
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Kennedy railed against the evils of &#8220;Paw Patrol&#8217;s&#8221; peppy team of first responder hounds, declaring them the real villains of the show because they don&#8217;t respect their local leaders.
“I’ll start with the depiction of the state. Mayor Humdinger and Mayor Goodway—kind of the representatives of the state or the government—are portrayed negatively,” Kennedy railed. “Mayor Humdinger is portrayed as unethical or corrupt. Mayor Goodway as hysterical, bumbling, incompetent.”
And don&#8217;t get him started on how the Paw Patrol itself encourages individual achievement through its motto, &#8220;no job too big, no pup too small.&#8221;
“To me that’s an individualist message,” Kennedy said. “Pull up your bootstraps, you can do it if you just try hard enough. That kind of message ignores structural barriers in our society and not everyone can do it.”
It&#8217;s a truly awful show, Kennedy complained. “I just think that as time goes on, children might be less likely to critique the capitalist system that causes environmental harm in the first place and reproduces inequality.&#8221;
What nerve.

Paw Patrol

Leftist Prof Claims ‘Paw Patrol’ Kids’ Cartoon Is ‘Capitalist Propaganda’

Canada

Capitalism

It&#8217;s safe to say that James Carville is not a fan of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The &#8220;Ragin&#8217; Cajun,&#8221; a longtime political strategist and former top adviser to President Bill Clinton, has been making the rounds blasting the socialist from Vermont — who polls currently show may blow away the field in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.
Carville said Monday that if Democrats give Sanders the 2020 presidential nomination, it will be the &#8220;end of days&#8221; for the party. And he said Sanders does not have the broad appeal necessary to win the general election in November, likening him to Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left leader of Britain&#8217;s Labour Party who was crushed in a recent high-profile British election.
“The only thing, the only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party. That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days. &#8230; So I am scared to death, I really am,&#8221; Carville said on MSNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Morning Joe.&#8221;
“If we lose that, we’re going to be the British Labour Party and be out in some theoretical left-wing la-la land,” Carville said.
Carville said Sanders does not appeal to black voters, whom he said are not interested in socialism, a revolution, or &#8220;all this foolishness you hear.&#8221;
And the strategist who pushed Clinton to repeat the mantra, &#8220;it&#8217;s the economy, stupid,&#8221; said Sanders&#8217; appeal to the far-left of the Democratic Party is downright cultish.
&#8220;There’s a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult. I’m not interested in being in a cult. I’m 75 years old. I’m just not a very cult-y person,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;Some people in this country want a revolution, they want disruption. I don&#8217;t know — they scream at people, they go and bully people. I don&#8217;t know how you win an election like that, 78 years old standing up screaming at a microphone about revolution. But you gotta&#8217; give people an alternative,&#8221; Carville said.
It&#8217;s not the first time Carville has railed about Sanders. Last week, he said, “it matters who the candidate is, it matters what a party chooses to talk about!”
“I’m 75 years old. Why am I here doing this? Because I am scared to death, that’s why! Let’s get relevant here, people, for sure. All the Sanders people are taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. I don’t want to go down that path!”
And in a recent interview with Vox, Carville said he was “scared to death” of the upcoming election.
“Look, the turnout in the Iowa caucus was below what we expected, what we wanted. Trump’s approval rating is probably as high as it’s been. This is very bad. And now it appears the party can’t even count votes. What the hell am I supposed to think?” he said.
“I’ll just say it this way: The fate of the world depends on the Democrats getting their s**t together and winning in November,” Carville said. “We have to beat Trump. And so far, I don’t like what I see. And a lot of people I talk to feel the same way.”

Politicon 2019 – Day 1

‘END OF DAYS’: Carville Warns Dems About Choosing Sanders — ‘I’m Not Interested In Being In A Cult!’

Bill Clinton

Jeremy Corbyn

Morning Joe

Progressivism

Mike Pompeo

Pompeo: China Trying To ‘Exploit Our Freedoms To Gain Advantage Over Us’ At Federal, State, Local Levels

Bernie Sanders.

WHITTLE: This Land Is His Land

Josef Stalin

&#8220;In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative. As Sun Tzu said, every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.&#8221; – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to The New Yorker&#8217;s Jeffrey Toobin, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/the-absolutist-2">June 2014</a>
Although President Donald Trump no doubt prefers to vent his off-the-cuff frustrations in tweet threads and campaign rallies, it is the planned teleprompter format in which he most clearly excels. Since assuming office, Trump&#8217;s State of the Union addresses have consistently been visceral, evocative, rhetorically fine-tune affairs that make brilliant use of audience guests to drive home his substantive agenda.
Last night&#8217;s speech was <a href="https://theresurgent.com/2020/02/04/best-state-of-the-union-ever/">no exception</a>, and the president was tremendously successful in framing the 2020 election as a stark choice between two competing visions of American governance: The economic prosperity, domestic security, and &#8220;peace through strength&#8221; deterrence of the Right, and the socialism, lawlessness, and capitulatory foreign policy of the Left. To borrow from Cruz&#8217;s quoting of Sun Tzu, Trump has &#8220;cho[sen] the terrain on which&#8221; the 2020 election &#8220;will be fought.&#8221;
The president <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/05/president-trump-offers-a-sharp-rebuke-of-socialism-at-precisely-the-right-time/">spoke at length</a> about the revving American economic engine, thus placing on the defensive the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-aocs-squad-will-destroy-democrats-2020-josh-hammer">toxic brand of socialism</a> that has come to dominate the modern Democratic Party. The Democrats are a political party with a <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">statistical frontrunner</a> of a presidential nominee who is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">lifelong communist activist</a> — a man who literally honeymooned in the Soviet Union and infamously hung a hammer-and-sickle Soviet flag inside his Burlington, Vermont mayoral office. They are advancing that nominee (and so many others who now mimic his economic illiteracy) in the context of an American electorate that, according to reliable pollster Gallup, is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americans-are-more-optimistic-about-the-economy-than-they-have-been-in-decades">most optimistic</a> it has been about the economy in decades. Americans <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval_economy-6182.html">currently approve</a> of Trump&#8217;s handling of the economy by over 17%, and Democrats&#8217; solution for that is to stage a presidential primary where one of the leading &#8220;intellectual&#8221; debates among the candidates is whether to literally abolish private health insurance in favor of a government monopoly.
Good luck with that.
The president also spoke about the gruesome horrors of sanctuary cities, the great majority of which are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-no-one-pointing-out-sanctuary-cities-josh-hammer">clearly illegal</a> under a straightforward reading of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1373">8 U.S.C. § 1373(a)</a>: &#8220;Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the [Department of Homeland Security] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.&#8221; The president masterfully provided gut-wrenching details of the crimes committed by illegal aliens mollycoddled by sanctuary jurisdictions — thus seemingly borrowing a tactic from Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, each of whom has at times provided vivid details of the underlying murders of those defendants whose capital punishment appeals reach the Court. Trump forced Democrats in the House chamber to retreat to the unenviable position of loudly booing his oratory assaults on criminal aliens and the sanctuary jurisdictions that harbor them. It was a remarkable sight to behold.
The president has thus successfully framed the 2020 election as a referendum about whether the nation will reject the Left&#8217;s two most profoundly ruinous current hobbyhorses: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-a-political-wish-for-2020-less-socialism-more-law-and-order">Socialism and lawlessness</a>. He also spoke directly to the heart and mind of the proverbial <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">forgotten American</a> — the tax-paying, church-attending, law-abiding American who still has an innate love and appreciation for what has always made America great. Say what one might about Trump, but one cannot plausibly deny that he is an &#8220;Americanist,&#8221; properly understood.
The American people will head to the ballot box this November with an exceedingly straightforward choice before them. Here is hoping they make the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-here-are-three-reasons-why-i-plan-vote-josh-hammer">right decision</a>.

President Trump Delivers State Of The Union Address

HAMMER: Trump Successfully Framed The Stark 2020 Election Choice During Last Night’s SOTU Address

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Clarence Thomas

Economy

Law Enforcement

Qassem Soleimani

Radical Islam

2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; (I-VT) campaign was rocked again on Tuesday after James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s Project Veritas released more undercover footage exposing paid Sanders campaign staffers appearing to advocate for violence against political opponents.
The new video from Project Veritas allegedly shows Sanders campaign South Carolina field organizers Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor advocating for &#8220;extreme action&#8221; and &#8220;militancy&#8221; against political opponents and private property.
Project Veritas provided the following highlights of things that Baird said:
<ul>
<li>“I’ve canvassed with someone who’s an anarchist, and with someone who’s a Marxist-Leninist. So, we attract radical, truly radical people in the campaign … obviously that’s not outward-facing.”</li>
<li>“A lot of those people who do that kind of work, are … their politics fall well outside of the American sort of norm. So, they&#8217;re Marxist-Leninist, they&#8217;re anarchists, they&#8217;re these types of folks, and um, and they have more of a mind for direct action, for engaging in politics outside of the electoral system.”</li>
<li>“A lot of the stories we’re told in the United States about, you know, the gulags and the persecution of the Kulaks and things like that are exaggerated … we certainly don&#8217;t have, uh, a straight perspective on that stuff here in America.”</li>
<li>“We would need a federal government and a labor movement that is working together to strip power away from capitalists and preferably directing that violence towards property.”</li>
<li>“It would, it&#8217;s gonna take, you know, it&#8217;s gonna take militancy … like a militant labor movement that’s willing to … strike, and if necessary, you know, just destroy property and things like that.”</li>
<li>“… after we abolish landlords, we don’t have to kill them …”</li>
<li>“… once we break up Google, YouTube, Facebook,  nationalize these things, then that would be a huge thing forward so far as education stuff goes.”</li>
</ul>
Project Veritas provided the the following highlights of things that Taylor said:
<ul>
<li>“For me personally, I have no problem going all in on the campaign stuff because you’re planting a seed … yeah, the whole socialist thing four years ago was a whole lot more toxic than it is today …”</li>
<li>“We don’t want to scare people off, you first have to feel it out before you get into the crazy stuff &#8230; You know we were talking about more extreme organizations like Antifa, you were talking about, Yellow Vests, all that but we’re kinda keeping that on the back-burner for now.”</li>
<li>“We have all this momentum, where do we go, regardless of the outcome, after it’s all over? Change won’t come easily, regardless. Even if Bernie is elected, change will not come swiftly or easily, so the connections we make now in the campaign with people, and volunteers, it’s important we retain that regardless of the outcome. It’s unfortunate that we have to make plans for extreme action but like I said, they’re not going to give it to us even if Bernie is elected.”</li>
</ul>
The new release from Project Veritas comes after the group released undercover <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-staff-bernies-a-legit-socialist-masquerading-as-a-democratic-socialist">videos</a> involving a paid Sanders campaign staffer in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-staff-people-who-push-back-on-revolution-should-expect-a-violent-response">Iowa</a> and in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/another-bernie-staffer-allegedly-promotes-violence-kill-the-rich-put-republicans-in-camps">South Carolina</a> in recent weeks that showed the staffers allegedly advocating for violence against political opponents. The Sanders campaign has largely ignored media requests on the matter and even <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-calls-police-on-reporters-for-asking-questions-about-his-staff-talking-about-killing-people">called the police</a> on journalists who pressed for a response from the campaign on the videos.
WATCH:
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Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders holds Town Hall In Perry, Iowa

Sanders Campaign Rocked Again: More Staff Caught Advocating Violence Against Opponents

James O'Keefe

Media

Project Veritas

South Carolina

Violence

While Democrats tried their best this week to give life to the make-believe scandal of President Trump doing something or other, an actual real-life scandal broke out in the presidential campaign of a Democratic front-runner. Not just one scandal; three.
The gadflies of James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas have released jaw-dropping secret camera footage of two of Bernie Sanders’ field organizers.
The first organizer, Kyle Jurek, tells a PV Journalist that Trump supporters will probably have to be re-educated like Nazis after World War II. That, he says, is what Bernie’s offer of free education is all about – to “teach you not to be a… Nazi.” He goes on to say that this is why Stalin created the Gulags, which “were a lot better than what the CIA has told us.” On the other hand, if Trump is re-elected, he says, “cities will burn.”
The second organizer, Martin Weissgerber, also fantasizes about taking up arms against his country. He also dreams of sending Republicans to gulag-style re-education camps. He jokes about how Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham will react to being brutalized. Referring to Graham, he makes a limp wrist gesture, a classic anti-gay slur. Like Jurek, Weissgerber feels the Soviet Union and its gulags got a bad rap. He learned in college that the U.S.S.R. was “the most progressive place to date” for women’s rights. He hopes that President Bernie will forgo Constitutional norms and just issue decrees concerning the environment.
To understand the depth of this scandal, one only has to imagine Trump campaign workers caught declaring that the Nazis weren’t so bad. Not only Trump but every Republican within a five hundred mile radius would be asked whether they disavowed the organizer’s words.
And the difference is: Trump is clearly not a Nazi. You can tell he’s not a Nazi because the people who call him a Nazi don’t get arrested; they just get contributor gigs on CNN. You can tell he’s not a Nazi because his policies have done more in three years for blacks and other minorities than Barack Obama’s policies did in eight. And you can tell he’s not a Nazi because they name streets after him in Israel where Nazis tend to be held in low esteem. So a Nazi employee of Trump would not be representative of his boss.
But representative is exactly what the Sanders field organizers are. Their boss is indeed a Communist, despite his occasional weak-sauce claims to the contrary. He honeymooned in the Soviet Union and voiced praise for murderous thugs Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega. He signed a letter of support for Hugo Chavez and has refused to call dictator Nicholas Maduro a dictator. (Maduro has endorsed his “revolutionary friend” Bernie.)
When a Project Veritas reporter approached the Sanders campaign in South Carolina and asked them to comment on the Weissgerber videos, the campaign called the police. An officer arrived and told the journalist the campaign had no comment. “They wish [Weissgerber] hadn’t said that but they’re standing by him,” the officer explained. They did not disavow the comments.
Sanders is surging in the polls. One recent national poll has him in the lead and another shows him ahead of Joe Biden in New Hampshire, where Sanders won big in 2016.
This alone would make the Project Veritas videos a major scandal. But in fact, as I said, they are three scandals in one. The first scandal is that the Sanders campaign employs violent-minded Communists, and they may well represent their candidate. The second scandal is that no mainstream outlet is covering the first scandal. They themselves are so corrupted by leftist ideas, they just don’t see it.
And the third scandal, which may be the biggest scandal of all, is that young voters love Sanders. He won a larger percentage of the youth vote in 2016 than Trump and Hillary Clinton combined, and if he has fewer young people in his camp this time out, it’s because so many of the other Democrat candidates have imitated his socialist policies in hopes of winning the future.
This means the leftist professors who taught Weissgerber that the Soviet slave empire and its gulags were not so bad after all are not anomalous but typical. Our universities are spreading lies in order to teach our children to vote themselves into slavery.
The Democrats condemned Donald Trump for 24 straight hours on the Senate floor this week. Not once did they mention any action by Trump that endangered our freedoms.
A Communist surging in the polls. A media that turns a blind eye. Universities spreading Soviet lies. These are scandals that threaten us all.

Sen. Bernie Sanders.

KLAVAN: The Three Bernie Sanders Scandals

Bernie Sanders&#8217; presidential campaign in South Carolina contacted law enforcement officials on Thursday after undercover journalists with James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s Project Veritas pressed the campaign to answer questions about violent remarks made by a paid Sanders campaign staffer.
The move by the Sanders campaign to call the police on reporters for asking them tough questions comes after Project Veritas released video earlier this week that allegedly showed Sanders field organizer Martin Weissgerber saying he wanted to kill wealthy people and throw Republicans into camps.
The police officer who responded told Project Veritas, &#8220;They said they are going to have no comment. If you try to make contact with them, it’s no comment &#8230; it’s one of those things where they wish he hadn’t said that, but they’re standing by him.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BernieSanders</a> Campaign calls the police on <a href="https://twitter.com/PVeritas_Action?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PVeritas_Action</a>. 
Officer: ‘They said they are going to have no comment. If you try to make contact with them it’s no comment&#8230;it’s one of those things where they wish he hadn’t said that, but they’re standing by him’ <a href="https://t.co/JF3KJfW0zI">pic.twitter.com/JF3KJfW0zI</a>
&mdash; James O&#39;Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1220345634655477760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/another-bernie-staffer-allegedly-promotes-violence-kill-the-rich-put-republicans-in-camps">Quotes</a> from Weissgerber that were featured in the video provided by Project Veritas include:
<ul>
<li>“Let’s force them (billionaires) to build roads … rebuild our roads, rebuild our dams, rebuild our bridges. Let’s force them to do that.”</li>
<li>“Well, the gulags were founded as re-education camps. … What will help is when we send all the Republicans to the re-education camps.”</li>
<li>“I’m already on Twitter, following numerous groups around the country that are ready to organize yellow vest protests. I’m ready … I’m ready to start tearing bricks up and start fighting. … I’m not — no cap, bro. I’ll straight up — I’ll straight up get armed, I want to learn how to shoot, and go train. I’m ready for the f***ing revolution, bro. … I’m telling you. Guillotine the rich.”</li>
<li>“I think I was radicalized from the day; first day I was born … my dad, is a Marxist. Like, straight-up from Belgium … he took part in Paris ’68 and all that, which is really cool. … I’ve always made it, I’ve always been unapologetic about it since I was younger, I always said, you know I’m a Communist … in my house, we had, you know Das Kapital, Engels, and Marx and all that sh*t. … I’m a Communist that believes in direct democracy, direct communes on everything. Pretty much, anarcho-syndicalism. Unions everything. I hope, but I don’t know how effective that is in addressing climate change, for instance.”</li>
<li>“Oh, yeah. My dad is real; my mom is, but my mom is really left as well. But she can’t make her views known, because she works for WBUR, which is NPR, so she’s more held back. But you know … But then I went, I started studying it. That’s what I studied in college, I studied Russian his–., Soviet history … I became the resident Marxist. … But, yeah, I’m all about the complete seizure of the means of production, nationalizing everything.”</li>
<li>“I only learned this sh*t in college when I started studying the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not horrible … I mean, for women’s rights, the Soviet Union — I think — the most progressive place to date in the world.”</li>
<li>“The first gulag that was opened; have you heard about Belomorkanal? They dug a canal; the plan was, in 1922, I think, to dig a Canal from the White Sea all the way to Saint Petersburg … a long way, if you look on a map … and, the whole point — it was going to be called the Belomorkanal, and I read — I spent a whole semester actually studying primary accounts from the Belomorkanal. The whole point of the Belomorkanal, there were no machines allowed. They forced the people to dig with shovels and hoe the whole canal, right? You should see the people writing about their time at the Belomorkanal. There’s this one guy, he was a thief from Georgia who had been captured. He was sent to the Belomorkanal to work and in his writing, like ‘I reject all thievery, I reject that past life.’ He said, capitalism made me into this thief, because when there’s poor people, there’s going to be crime. He said, ‘I went to the Belomorkanal and I worked.’ He became a shock worker, which is what they call the leading workers, people who always met the quota and exceeded the quota … and, like people came from America to work at the Belomorkanal for the Soviet project, the communist project. It was a beautiful thing.”</li>
<li>“Leave it to the Soviets to make the most badass f***ing, most effective gun in the world … AK-47 … the destroyer of imperialism and coloniali[sm] … that’s why I want to get it [AK-47] tattooed on me.”</li>
<li>“So, do we just cease — do we just dissolve the Senate, House of Representatives, the judicial branch, and have something Bernie Sanders and a cabinet of people, make all decisions for the climate? I mean, I’m serious.”</li>
</ul>
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: 2ND PAID STAFFER PRAISES GULAGS
South Carolina <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BernieSanders</a> Field Organizer <a href="https://twitter.com/martinthemanic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@martinthemanic</a>: &quot;I&#39;ll straight up get armed&#8230;I&#39;m ready for the &quot;f**king revolution&quot;; &quot;Guillotine the rich&quot;; &#39;send Republicans to re-education camps&#39;
FULL RELEASE 12:00PM<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Expose2020?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Expose2020</a> <a href="https://t.co/tUCeKEY6aM">pic.twitter.com/tUCeKEY6aM</a>
&mdash; James O&#39;Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1219620664505593856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Bernie Campaign Calls Police On Reporters For Asking Questions About His Staff Talking About Killing People

Police

Soviet Union

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