Cuban-American Reporter Calls Out Kaepernick on Castro Praise

Cuban-American Reporter Calls Out Kaepernick on Castro Praise

As Cuban exiles flood into the streets of Miami to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, I’m reading an article published yesterday—just hours before Castro’s death was announced, an article by a Miami Herald reporter who challenged Colin Kaepernick on his fanciful notions about Castro.

Earlier this week the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem heaped praise on Castro; Herald reporter Armando Salguero took issue with Kaepernick’s ignorant and hypocritical comments.

The Palm Beach Post reported:

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who caused a controversy early this season by wearing a T-shirt that contained an image of Fidel Castro, praised Castro’s educational system in a heated conference call with the South Florida media Wednesday.

. . . .  When pressed about the shirt, Kaepernick first pointed out that Malcolm X also was pictured. Kaepernick said he supports Malcolm X and his willingness to be “open-minded” before forming his own views of the world. Part of that open-mindedness, he said, was meeting with the Cuban leader.

But when The Miami Herald reporter repeatedly asked about Castro specifically, Kaepernick said, “I’m not talking about Fidel Castro and his oppression. I’m talking about Malcolm X and what he’s done for people.”

The reporter, from a family of Cuban exiles, then accused Kaepernick of diverting the conversation because it was “uncomfortable” to talk about perceived support of Castro. At that point, Kaepernick said, “One thing that Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here, even though we’re fully capable of doing that.”

The reporter said Castro also broke up families, unlike what occurs in the United States.

“We do break up families here,” Kaepernick said. “That’s what mass incarceration is. That was the foundation of slavery so our country has been based on that as well as the genocide of native Americans.”

You've read a Miami Herald reporter challenged Colin Kaepernick. I'm that reporter. My column on the exchange: https://t.co/pSmYfePZU4

— Armando Salguero (@ArmandoSalguero) November 25, 2016

In his piece, Salguero writes:

So after his first notable protest against what last week he called the “systematic oppression” of minorities in the United States, and saying he wants “freedom for all people,” Colin Kaepernick put on a T-shirt that featured a supportive image of one of the 20th century’s most enduring oppressors.

This absurd contradiction between what Kaepernick said and does was only a distant annoyance to me because, although I was born into Cuba’s imprisonment, I don’t often write about Kaepernick or his team. This wasn’t my fight.

But this week Colin Kaepernick is on a teleconference call with me and other South Florida reporters who cover the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins are playing Kaepernick’s team Sunday. And Kaepernick is saying if anyone is “OK with people being treated unfairly, being harassed, being terrorized, then the problem is more what they’re doing in their lives …”

And because Kaepernick apparently doesn’t understand his words apply to him before he can apply them to others, I ask the man who protests oppression why he wore the Castro shirt when the tyrant is demonstrably a star on the world’s All Oppressor team?

Kaepernick, like the kids running around in Che and Mao tee-shirts, has no idea what he is saying or any clue about the history of Cuba and of Castro’s brutal, evil regime.

Salguero continues:

Cuba for more than five decades under the Castros has stifled practically any and all dissent. According to Human Rights Watch, “Cuban citizens have been systematically deprived of their fundamental rights to free expression, privacy, association, assembly, movement, and due process of law. Tactics for enforcing political conformity have included police warnings, surveillance, short-term detentions, house arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and politically motivated dismissals from employment.”

Now go to Google images of the Ladies In White protesting on Cuba’s streets. Kaepernick, the poster child for protest among NFL players, should do this. He would see images of women — white, black, mothers, daughters, sisters — systematically violated in one form or another by Castro’s thugs.

They are harassed, spat upon, pushed and even bloodied simply because they are fighting to do in Cuba what Kaepernick does on an NFL sideline without fear or physical repercussion — just before he wears that Castro shirt to his postgame presser.

The entire thing reminds me of the prof’s recent post about Tucker Carlson’s interview with the scariest SJW he’s ever seen.   The dull, robotic recitation of trite and proven lies that trip out of Kaepernick’s mouth are almost surreal.

Salguero continues:

I’m hoping Kaepernick understands one should not make broad statements about standing up for people’s rights, then slip into a Fidel Castro shirt, suggesting approval for a man who has spent his days on the planet stifling people’s rights.

And that’s exactly the moment Kaepernick shows how lost he truly is. Because in the next breath, Kaepernick, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explains to me, the guy born in Havana, how great Castro really is.

“One thing Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here even though we’re fully capable of doing that,” Kaepernick said.

Is this real life?

First, Cuba does not have the highest literacy rate. Second, don’t be surprised if the same people who report Cuba’s admittedly high literacy rate are related to those who report its election results — the ones in which the Castros get 100 percent of the votes.

Third, could it be Cuba doesn’t have to invest a lot in its prison system because, you know, dungeons and firing squads (El Paredon) are not too expensive to maintain?

Finally, it’s bizarre that Kaepernick is extolling the education system of a country where people believe launching out into shark-infested seas to flee is a better idea than staying there.

So I make the point to Kaepernick that aside from that awesome school system the Castro devils established, there was also that communist revolution we should consider, and the lack of free elections and justice. And after teaching folks the alphabet, to Kaepernick’s apparent delight, the Castros break up families, including mine, because some folks get out and others cannot.

Sadly, no facts, not even those reported by first-hand witnesses, will ever dissuade the true believers.  They don’t deal in facts; they deal in lies, and when you point out that they are lying, they shrug it off because, after all, the truth is not really relevant to their point.

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