Trump condemns Castro's legacy of 'firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering'

Iraqi vice-president Saddam Hussein (C), stands with Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) and Defense minister General Raul Castro (R)

(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 28 November 2016

After a brief celebratory tweet — "Fidel Castro is dead!" — President-elect Donald Trump made a statement Saturday condemning the former Cuban president's history of human rights abuses.

"The world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades," he said. "Fidel Castro's legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights." Trump went on to describe Cuba as "a totalitarian island" but expressed hope that Castro's demise will foster "a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve."

Trump has vehemently criticized the Castro regime since the 1990s, after he came under fire for allegedly exploring opening a casino on the island. Castro has "turned his nation into a maximum-security prison," Trump wrote in a 1999 op-ed for the Miami Herald. "The secret police are unrestrained. The disappearance and beatings of citizens are still tools of civilian control, as is the suppression of free speech. Castro's ruthless domination of the Cuban people has not lessened even as his regime crumbles."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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