WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Congressman-Elect in West Virginia’s 2nd District is opposing President Barack Obama’s steps toward restoring full diplomatic relations with Cuba, steps the President said he is taking to “cut loose the shackles of the past.”
“I think we need to be tough with our enemies and keep the embargo and stand up against these tyrants,” said Congressman-Elect Alex Mooney whose mother, Lala, is a Cuban immigrant.
According to Mooney’s biography, his mother was thrown into jail for seven weeks for opposing Fidel Castro’s Communist regime. She escaped Cuba when she was 21, but has returned several times since then.
“I’ve never been there, but Cuba, like many other countries in this world, is pushing a great oppression on folks, they have no rights whatsoever. I don’t support what he’s doing,” Mooney, who is preparing to take office in the New Year, said of the President’s actions on Cuba.
“When I get down there, we’ll see what we can do to fight back on this and many other issues when he’s just gone off and done his own things,” Mooney said, noting he’s not against eventually reconciling relations with Cuba.
“Once Cuba embraces basic freedoms and democracies and gives rights to their folks, those are things to be considered. The problem is, once again, Barack Obama is unilaterally just giving Communists, like he has in other areas, not standing up to them, just giving them special privileges,” he said.
In addition to taking steps to restore relations, the U.S. will open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century.
“We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” President Obama said earlier this month during the announcement that came after 18 months of secret talks that included a prisoner swap.
The first U.S. trade embargo with Cuba started in 1960 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and diplomatic relations broke off the following January. In April 1961, the failed Bay of Pigs operation was aimed at toppling Castro’s regime.