Former Obama officials Jen Psaki and Ben Rhodes took to MS NOW — formerly known as MSNBC — to publicly rage against the indictment of Cuban dictator Raúl Castro, because apparently holding a communist tyrant accountable for murdering Americans is a bridge too far for the people who once rolled out the red carpet for him.
Let that sink in. Two people who served in the White House are on national television defending a murderous dictator. In 2026. On American airwaves. Paid handsomely for the privilege.
Ben Rhodes, Obama's former speechwriter and confidant had the audacity to call the indictment video "extraordinary in its hubris, tone-deafness and hypocrisy." Hubris! The guy who helped engineer Obama's Cuba lovefest is lecturing us about hubris.
But Rhodes wasn't done. He actually said on air: "The scarcity in Cuba is not because its leaders stole money. It's because there's been an embargo for decades." There it is, folks. The full communist apologist playbook. Blame America for Cuba's poverty. Not the regime that nationalized every business, crushed every dissent, and drove its people onto rafts made of garbage to escape paradise.
What destroyed Cuba was the COMMUNISM. Not the embargo. Not Helms-Burton. The communism. But Rhodes and his ilk will never admit that because it would mean their entire Obama-era Cuba policy — the handshakes, the photo ops, the capitulation — was a catastrophic failure.
And it was. Remember 2016? Obama flew to Havana with Rhodes and Psaki in tow, posed for pictures, did the wave at a baseball game with Raúl Castro while Brussels was still smoldering from a terrorist attack. They gave Cuba everything — diplomatic recognition, eased sanctions, tourist dollars — and got absolutely nothing in return. No political prisoners freed. No free elections. No free press. Just a communist regime that pocketed the goodwill and kept the boot on its people's necks.
Now Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration are finally doing what should have been done decades ago — treating Castro like the criminal he is. And the Obama alumni network is having a collective meltdown.
Psaki, who built her career on saying nothing with great confidence, joined Rhodes to pile on. Because of course she did. When your entire foreign policy legacy is "we were nice to dictators and they were still dictators," you don't have a lot of options when someone comes along and actually holds those dictators accountable.
Here's what really burns these people up. It's not the indictment itself. It's what the indictment represents — a complete and total repudiation of the Obama doctrine on Cuba. Every smiling handshake, every lifted restriction, every naive belief that "engagement" would reform a communist police state has been exposed as the fantasy it always was.
The Kennedy administration learned the hard way about Castro's Cuba during the Bay of Pigs in the 1960s. You'd think six decades of evidence would be enough. But the Obama crowd needed another lesson, and they still haven't learned it.
Rhodes and Psaki defending Castro on national television isn't a gaffe. It's a confession. The mask is off, the sympathy is real, and every Cuban-American who fled that island's brutality can see exactly where these people's loyalties lie. As reported by NewsBusters, it was all right there on camera for the world to see.
Remember this the next time someone tells you both parties are the same on foreign policy. One side indicts communist dictators. The other side goes on TV to cry about it.