Cuban-American GOP House Members Tell Code Pink Protesters Disruption Would Not Fly in Cuba: They Would ‘Put You in Jail’

Code Pink protesters interrupted a press conference Friday where four Cuban-American House members discussed the recent trip Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) took to Cuba and called on the State Department to maintain their home country’s designation as a state sponsor of terror.

Representative María Elvira Salazar (R., Fla.), born to Cuban exiles in Miami, was the first of the GOP lawmakers to address the Code Pink disruption.

“I love this, because if we traveled to Cuba now — they would not let me go, but they would let you go — you would not be able to come close to the Capitol and speak your mind and have a dialogue like we can have right now,” Elvira Salazar said, “because they would either put you in jail or put you on the plane back.”

Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.) told the Code Pink protesters that, if they are concerned with human rights, they should turn their attention elsewhere.

“Instead of standing here protesting our press conference, you should be at the southern border, or maybe standing at the other side of the ocean where we’ve seen Cubans fleeing on makeshift rafts. And maybe you can learn about what’s actually happening in communist Cuba, because you’re using a privilege that we have here in the United States that the Cuban people do not have,” Malliotakis said. “And as my colleague said, you won’t be jailed. You won’t be killed if you do what you’re doing right here . . . it’s ironic that we stand here with signs supporting a communist regime.”

As for why Cuba should remain on the state-sponsor-of-terror list, Representative Mario Díaz-Balart (R., Fla.) listed a number of acts the government of Havana has carried out that he believes necessitate the designation.

“They harbor fugitives from American law,” he said “and they are now training troops to fight for Russia in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That regime is a close ally of every U.S. adversary and every rogue regime, whether it’s communist China, Iran, North Korea, you name it. They were caught even attempting to smuggle 240 tons of weapons illegally into North Korea, another terrorist regime.”

Representative Carlos Gímenez (R., Fla.) said that “the embargoes are there to put pressure on the regime to have free and democratic elections,” also mentioning Cuban mercenaries fighting on the Russian side in the invasion of Ukraine.

After Capitol Police led the two Code Pink protesters away from the staging ground for the press conference, National Review had the opportunity to speak with Ann Wright, a member of the progressive nonprofit’s board of directors who served in the U.S. military and in American embassies before leaving government and entering activism.

“This is one more political move of people who left Cuba back in the revolution 60 years ago, and most of them have been compensated for any sort of economic loss that they got. It’s part of a long-term strategy for the overthrow of the Cuban government,” she said. “They do have elections there, so there were a lot of things that were said that just aren’t true that were said in the press conference.”

When asked about political repression — a key topic in the remarks the four House members gave — Wright seemed to equivocate.

“There’s political repression everywhere. I mean, when people do violent acts against governments, then the response of governments to them is always called political repression. We see that on January 6, where the Capitol is almost ruined, yet by some people it’s called political repression that these people are in jail,” Wright told NR. “I don’t know the specifics of every single person that’s in a Cuban jail that they are saying are political prisoners, but every one of them should be looked at. It doesn’t do any good for the Cuban government, if they are keeping just political opposition people in jail. I mean, that’s stupid But if there have been violent acts that have been committed against a state, then they go to jail for it.”

Elvira Salazar, echoing her earlier remarks, told NR after the press conference that the Code Pink protesters’ actions demonstrate the difference between a state like Cuba and the U.S.

“It’s a beautiful moment in American history,” she said of the interruption, “because it goes to show you what a great system we have, which is the same system we want to replicate in Cuba. I don’t know who they are, but I’m so happy they showed up, because, listen: If they would have done the same thing at a press conference of Díaz Canal, who is a Castro puppet, they would be in a place called Villa Marista. They put you there, they torture you, and they say, ‘who sent you? the Americans? I’m sure it was.'”

Elvira Salazar told NR she feels bad for people who sympathize with the Cuban government.

“Poor people. They have not seen reality. They drank the Kool-Aid and they really believe that the Cuban regime is good. Go ask the people that I represent,” she said.