Florida Socialist Senator Nominee Sparks Debate Over Cuba Comments
Florida socialist Angie Nixon faces backlash over her comments on Cuba’s regime ahead of midterms.
2 min read
Florida socialist Angie Nixon, the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, is facing renewed scrutiny after declining to say whether she considers Cuba’s communist regime a dictatorship. In an interview with CBS News that aired Monday, Nixon was asked directly whether she considered the regime a dictatorship.
“That is what people have told me. I have never been to Cuba, and so I will have to take their word for it,” Nixon told the outlet.
The remarks drew immediate backlash, raising fresh questions about whether Nixon’s ties to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) could alienate Latino voters, a key demographic Democrats are counting on to make gains in November.
“This is how Democrats lose elections in Miami-Dade. And they need to win Miami-Dade to win Florida,” Axios reporter Marc Caputo wrote on X.
Nixon’s GOP rival, Florida Sen. Ashley Moody, also responded to the clip.
“Socialist Angie can’t answer if Cuba is a dictatorship? I guess now we know why she voted against the Florida law to require schools to teach the dangers of communism.”
In response to the backlash, Nixon accused CBS of committing what she called a “serious failure of editorial reporting.”
“I clearly state in this clip that while I have not personally been to Cuba, I have spoken with Cubans who have described it as a dictatorship, and I believe them,” Nixon said in a follow-up statement. “To claim I declined to answer the question is categorically false. That is not journalism. It is misinformation.”
After Nixon called out CBS News, the network deleted its original post that stated Nixon “declined to say” whether the Cuban regime is a dictatorship. In a second post, CBS News included an editor’s note stating that the previous post “did not accurately portray Rep. Nixon’s answer.”
During the interview, the leftist also criticized the longstanding embargo and the Trump administration’s economic crackdown on Cuba, spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Nixon called for a return to the Obama-era stance toward the communist nation.
“We need to allow the Cubans over there to have access to businesses and to be able to fully trade with, you know, their American loved ones and also to have the opportunity to see them,” she said.
It’s not the only comment landing the Senate hopeful in hot water. Earlier this month, Nixon went on CNN to push back on claims that she supported abolishing prisons because she wants her opponent, Sen. Moody, thrown behind bars.
“They are spreading, like, a lot of disinformation and lies on commercials about me, of saying things like, I want to abolish prisons and I want to defund the police,” Nixon claimed. “Why would I want to do that when I want her [Moody] locked up and punished in jail for what she has done?”
Source: Daily Wire
