Since 1998, Trump has wanted his hotels and golf courses in communist Cuba
From 1998 to at least the year 2016, Donald Trump thought of Cuba as a potential business site for his hotels and golf courses. Typical of the Trump style, though, over the years, when it has not been convenient (a short-lived run for the presidency in 2000, and the 2016 election) he has denied any interest in establishing businesses on the communist Island. Yet, Trump executives, and at least one consulting firm paid by the Trump organization, traveled to Cuba on Donald Trump’s behalf in search of business opportunities. And on Oct. 29, 2008, the Trump organization hired Cuban lawyer Leticia Laura Bermudez Benítez in Havana to register the Trump brand in the Official Bulletin of the Cuban Office of Industrial Property establishing a future foothold on the Island.
But it’s 2020, and without Florida Trump has little chance of winning back the White House in November. So as he’s done in the past, the president is courting the Cuban Republican extreme-right voting bloc from Miami in hopes that this small but powerful group, who has been easily fooled by presidents since the 1960s with the same “Cuba libre” chant, can put him over the top in a state with 29 Electoral College votes. And his central message is that a vote for Democrat Joe Biden is a vote in favor of communism… It’s a message I find contradictory coming from a man whose only belief is “What’s good for Donald Trump,” which in the recent past has included the possibility of doing business in communist Cuba.
I called an old acquaintance involved with the Trump campaign in Florida. He asked to stay anonymous. I asked him of Trump’s lies to Cubans and his ventures into Cuba. Without answering the question he reminded me that first, it’s an election year and Trump needs the Cuban Republican vote in Miami. He then added, “More than ever!” As to his anti-communist message, he answered: “Whatever works…” Before hanging up he said: “We’re gonna solve the Cuba problem the same way we solved Venezuela’s…” He never gave me a chance to say goodbye.
Newsweek outs Trump
In a Sept. 29, 2016, article, Newsweek Magazine revealed that in 1998 “A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in Communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.”
That company, in 1998 called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, with Trump’s knowledge, paid an American consulting firm, called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp., to serve as shield in their illegal venture seeking future business opportunities on the Island. A former Trump executive explained the reason for the trip as establishing a “foothold” in Cuba. During the 1998 trip, Trump Hotels & Casinos spent a minimum of $68,000 during this visit to Cuba. There’s a Seven Arrows letter dated Feb. 8, 1999, and addressed to John Burke, a Trump Hotels executive, for “expenses incurred prior to and including a trip to Cuba on behalf of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc.”
During that 1998 trip, the Trump organization broke the embargo. The trip had not been sanctioned by the federal Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as shown in the John Burke letter. Again typical of the Trump style (lying and cheating), just a few months after the ’98 trip, Trump, who was running for president as a Reform Party candidate, promised a crowd of Cubans in Miami that he would “maintain the embargo and never spend his or his companies’ money in Cuba until Fidel Castro was removed from power.” That’s after having spent at least $68,000 on the Island.
For those Trump enablers that cry “fake news” about anything that might possibly hurt the president, the same Newsweek article cites Kellyanne Conway, who in 2016 headed the Trump presidential campaign, during her appearance on the TV program The View admitting to the Trump organization’s misdeeds when she told interviewers: “They paid money, as I understand, in 1998.”
Two things that characterize Trump
Two things that we know for sure: Donald Trump is a micromanager (he always makes the final decision); and Trump is a conniving liar (as of July 9, The Washington Post printed that President Trump, during his less than four years in office, had made more than 20,000 false and misleading claims).
Then there’s this article published in bloomberg.com where Trump is asked on CNN if he’d be interested in opening a hotel in Cuba. His answer, yes, adding: “I would, I would—at the right time, when we’re allowed to do it. Right now, we’re not.” Then on July 26, 2016, months before he is elected president, he told Miami reporter Jim DeFede on television that “Cuba would be a good opportunity [but] I think the timing is not right.”
The Bloomberg article goes on to say that “Trump Organization executives and advisers traveled to Havana in late 2012 or early 2013, according to two people familiar with the discussions that took place in Cuba and who spoke on condition of anonymity. Among the company’s more important visitors to Cuba have been Larry Glick, Trump’s executive vice president for strategic development, who oversees golf, and Edward Russo, Trump’s environmental consultant for golf. On later trips, they were joined by Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, and Ron Lieberman, another Trump golf executive. Glick, Greenblatt, and Lieberman didn’t respond to requests for interviews. Melissa Nathan, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, declined to answer a list of detailed questions.”
So based on what we know of Donald Trump, the man, and how he acts and responds to things, especially anything to do with the Trump ‘brand,’ can anybody deny the fact that Donald Trump is interested in doing business in Cuba, no matter who is in charge of the government there. Or has almost 20 years of trying to build Trump hotels and golf courses while Fidel, then Raul, and now Miguel Diaz-Canel run the Cuban government… Of course, Trump himself will deny this, in spite of the proof.
And yet, even after we publish this article with details never divulged before, which include the Bulletin Number, Section and page (with photo) of the Trump name registered in Cuba’s Official Bulletin of Industrial Property, there will be many in Miami and elsewhere who will call it ‘Fake News’ simply because they have no better argument than to believe another Trump lie. They ignore the fact that the Trump brand applied in three nominals: 36, 41, 43 (as it appears in the Official Bulletin). These applications are valid for 10 years, extendable for 6 more months. Thus, the Trump brand was in effect on the Island until 2018, at which time Trump had been president for 2 years.
Trump needs Miami Cubans if he stands a chance
Let’s make a few thing clear. It’s been established by major media in the U.S. that Trump is a world-class liar. The 20,000 lies The Washington Post documents is more than enough evidence of this. Secondly, at least since 1998, the Trump organization, headed by none other than the president of the United States, has had clear and unequivocal intentions of establishing their brand of hotels and golf courses in Cuba. To the point, as we’ve revealed, that Trump executives traveled to Cuba in 2008, hired a Cuban lawyer and registered the Trump brand for future possibilities dealing with hotel properties and golf courses on the Island. All this done — sometimes illegally, as we have shown with the $68,000 spent in 1998 — while Cuba was under the direction of a communist government, and at the beginning of their attempts a government headed by Fidel Castro.
But still, many in Miami Cuban Republican circles have a sick love for Trump because he is their anti-communist hero. A man who promises everything and will give them nothing, unless hurting common everyday Cubans on the Island who have been direly affected by Trump’s tightening of screws on the Island simply to please the Marco Rubios of Miami and show them what a strongman he can be counts as something. And in the end, all that Donald Trump is doing is digging for every single vote he can garner from people he can fool into believing that he stands with them. It brings me right back to the person mentioned earlier and his words. Look at what Trump promised the Venezuelans, and look what he’s done for them… Nothing!
Cuban Miami Republicans who will end up voting for Trump are fools; masochists who enjoy hammering themselves in the (fill in the blank). They will end up voting for what they claim to hate most: a lying tyrant and a wannabe dictator.
