Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio criticize Obama after death of Cuban leader but Trump adviser gives little clarity on president-elect’s future policy

Leading Republicans condemned Fidel Castro on Sunday but uncertainty remained over whether the incoming Trump administration would make good on campaign promises to reverse the normalization of relations instigated by Barack Obama.

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“You wouldn’t go to Pol Pot’s funeral,” Texas senator Ted Cruz told ABC’s This Week. “You shouldn’t be doing what Obama and [Canadian prime minister Justin] Trudeau are doing, celebrating Castro.”

In response to news of Castro’s death on Saturday, aged 90, Obama released a carefully worded statement that did not criticise or praise the leader, instead saying: “The Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.”

Trudeau attracted widespread criticism for a statement that many saw as too laudatory.

Cruz, who is of Cuban descent, said Castro had been “a murderous dictator” and said: “This tyrannical regime has gotten stronger because of a weak president, weak foreign policy.”

Cruz’s criticism of policy under Obama and Castro’s brother Raúl, the current Cuban president, was echoed by Florida senator Marco Rubio, another former presidential candidate of Cuban descent.

Rubio, who has long been one of the harshest critics of Obama’s efforts and has links to Cuban Americans in Miami who celebrated news of Castro’s death, said the president’s comments were “pathetic”.

Asked on CNN’s State of the Union about Obama’s statement and that issued by Pope Francis, who expressed sorrow regarding Castro’s death, Rubio said that as a Catholic he looked to the pope for spiritual guidance, not political.

“Barack Obama is the president of the most powerful country in the world,” he said. “And what I called pathetic is not mentioning whatsoever in that statement the reality that there are thousands upon thousands of people who suffered brutally under the Castro regime.



“He executed people. He jailed people for 20 to 30 years. [In] the Florida Straits … thousands of people … lost their lives fleeing his dictatorship. And not to acknowledge any of that in the statement, I felt was pathetic, absolutely.”

Obama began normalizing relations with the island in 2014, with the help of Pope Francis, after what many viewed as a failed embargo and 50 years of harsh sanctions. This year he became the first president to visit the island since 1928.



The embargo is still formally in place but normalization allowed the island nation greater access to the internet, the export of some goods, direct flights from the US and a likely boost to the Cuban middle class.

Critics have argued that the US conceded too much. On Sunday, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway focused on the “deal”, telling ABC the US got “nothing in return”. She did not, however, give many clues to likely Trump policy.

“[Trump] is open to any number of possibilities,” she said. “He is open to researching and, in fact, resetting relations with Cuba.”

On Fox News Sunday, Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus discussed Trump’s wish for reforms by the Raúl Castro government, for “some movement or some schedule of movement” on Cuba’s part that would be necessary to “then schedule some kind of relationship” the country.

The president-elect was “absolutely” willing to reverse diplomatic openness, Priebus said, but before any decision was taken “there has to be something, and what that something is … is yet to be determined”.

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Following Castro’s death, Trump issued a statement that called Castro a “brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades”. Over more than a year of campaigning, he said both that expanded diplomatic relations were “fine” and that he would reverse Obama’s policy.

In interviews with the Guardian on Saturday, academics cited growing US business interest in Cuba as one indicator that Trump would not put relations into reverse.



“He’s a businessman,” said Gregory Weeks, of the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. “He’s been interested in doing business in Cuba.”

Trump has been accused of investigating a business deal in Cuba while sanctions were in place, in the Clinton era.

Weeks added: “There is not a whole lot of interest in rolling back Cuba policy. The business side of the Republican party is very much in favour of it.”