Juan Williams: Cuba connection will cost Trump dear

One of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s firms — Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts — paid consultants nearly $70,000 in 1999 to secretly look into doing business in Cuba while the communist country was still under a U.S. embargo, according to Newsweek.

That story fit with another Newsweek revelation about Trump’s decision to turn his back on the struggling American steel industry on two of his recent construction projects. He bought cut-rate steel and aluminum from government-backed mills in China instead.

And then there are questions about Trump’s reliance on Russian investors and Chinese banks. The troubling extent of his dependence on money from foreign, communist-backed enterprises is one of the most frequent explanations for why Trump won’t release his tax returns.

{mosads}Oh, and the man who is running for president as a business titan who knows how to create wealth also lost nearly a billion dollars while the economy was booming in the 1990s, according to the New York Times — and may not have paid taxes for 18 years.

Trump’s troubling financial entanglements with China — a country he says is ripping off the U.S. economy — as well as ties to oligarchs in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and a desire to do business in Fidel Castro’s Cuba might all be revealed if he would release his tax returns.

But even without the tax returns, the Cuba story is the one with the potential to end Trump’s presidential bid.

He needs the Cuban-American vote to have any chance of winning the critical swing state of Florida.

Trump supporter and one-time presidential rival, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio sees the danger. He called the allegations that Trump explored business in Cuba during the embargo without pre-clearance from the U.S. government “very serious and troubling.”

It is worth noting that Rubio is himself the son of Cuban immigrants and is only about six points ahead of his Democratic opponent as he fights to keep his Senate seat. Like Trump, Rubio cannot afford to risk reduced voter turnout in Florida’s Cuban-American community.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign sees an enormous political opening. They have started running a radio ad in Florida targeting Trump’s apparent indifference to freedom-loving people engaged in decades of struggle against Castro.

“While our parents and grandparents were fighting the Castro regime both on and off the island, Donald Trump was looking to line his pocket, and even worse, those of the Castro brothers. This is a serious insult to our community,” the ad concludes.

That ad stays with me because the issue is personal for me.

When I was a boy, my mother fled Panama with me, my brother and sister to get away from a Castro-like populist dictator named Arnulfo Arias. He had shut the door on education and opportunity for all but his followers, punishing people of color, even threatening their citizenship. He ruled with an iron fist — subjugating, jailing and even torturing anyone whom his government suspected of disobedience to the state.

I can totally relate to the plight of the Cuban people and the Cuban refugee community. Their story is essentially my family’s story.

This empathy is why I was so disappointed when President Obama unilaterally lifted restrictions on Cuba last year, without a firm schedule for restoring human rights to the Cuban people.

The U.S. embargo on Cuba was put in place to isolate the Castro regime and force the restoration of those rights. Even today, Castro does not allow a free press and holds political prisoners.

While I don’t agree with Obama’s decision to weaken the embargo by easing travel and financial restrictions, I understand his thinking. The president argues that half a century of sanctions did not bring change to Cuba and it is time to try something new. This is not about money.

That is far different from Trump’s game. He was all about putting money in his pocket by covertly defying the embargo. Based on Newsweek’s reporting, Trump did not give a damn about ending the painful history of communist oppression in Cuba.

He was willing to undermine U.S. foreign policy — codified by law — and gave a form of aid and comfort to the murderous Castro regime for money.

It is easy to see how this would anger not just Cuban Americans but lots of other families — including my own — who came to America to escape Latin American despots. 

“The issue has already started to percolate among the state’s large Cuban-American population and could have the potential to undo some of the progress that Mr. Trump — a pariah to many Hispanics — had been making there,” the New York Times reported last week.

The latest Census figures show there are over 1.4 million Cuban Americans currently living in the Sunshine State.

Donald Trump needs this historically reliable Republican constituency to turn out big and support him next month or he will surely lose the state and its 29 electoral votes to Clinton.

History may soon record that it was the press reports about Trump’s business dealings with Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba — not his poor debate performances — that cost him the 2016 election.