CNN — the network that spent a decade calling Donald Trump “literally Hitler” — just ran a fawning puff piece on the grandson of Fidel Castro, a man whose regime murdered roughly 100,000 people and forced an entire country in poverty. Apparently mass executions, political prisons, and seven decades of totalitarian rule are all water under the bridge if you’ve got a decent Instagram following.
Designer sunglasses at night during a blackout. Now *that’s* what CNN considers must-see television!
The network sent reporter Patrick Oppmann to Havana to interview 33-year-old Sandro Castro, who CNN lovingly described as “an influencer and nightclub impresario.” Think about that framing for a second. If one of Mussolini’s grandkids opened a bottle-service lounge in Rome and posted thirst traps on Instagram, would CNN call him a “nightclub impresario”? Of course they would — as long as he voiced his hatred for Donald Trump.
Sandro lives in Kohly, an exclusive Havana neighborhood crawling with military and intelligence officials. When Oppmann showed up, the entire city of Havana was plunged into yet another blackout — because communism can’t keep the lights on after 67 years of trying. But Sandro’s apartment? Humming along on a fancy EcoFlow backup generator, stocked with foreign appliances and ice-cold Cristal beers.
Meanwhile, the average Cuban earns less than $20 a month. A carton of eggs costs half a month’s salary. Seventy-two percent of the population lives below the poverty line. One in five Cubans regularly skips meals. But sure, CNN, tell us more about how Sandro drives his “toy” Mercedes-Benz around town and throws lavish birthday bashes at his nightclub. What a story on the average Cuban person’s life experiences!
The interview itself was pure comedy. Sandro was literally on the phone with his father preparing talking points when CNN arrived. Nothing says “I have no interest in politics” like rehearsing your answers with daddy before the cameras roll.
And the answers he gave? Chef’s kiss.
When Oppmann asked why people hate the Castro family — without, naturally, mentioning the firing squads, the political prisoners, or the tens of thousands of corpses — Sandro offered this pearl of wisdom: “It’s complicated.”
It’s complicated! The man’s grandfather locked up dissidents for shouting slogans. One guy, Jorge Luis García Pérez, spent 17 years in prison for the crime of yelling something anti-Castro at age 25. But yeah, Sandro, real complicated stuff.
Even better, young Castro claimed his grandfather “respected others’ opinions.” Fidel Castro — the man whose regime, according to Human Rights Watch, “punished virtually all forms of dissent” and denied “entire generations basic political freedoms” — apparently was just a big free-speech advocate who happened to run a gulag archipelago on the side.
Sandro then told CNN, with a straight face, “We have to open the economic model, eliminate the bureaucracy.” His grandfather BUILT the bureaucracy. His great-uncle Raúl, who at 94 still runs the island as its supreme dictator, IS the bureaucracy. This is like an arsonist’s kid complaining about fire safety codes.
But CNN ate it all up. Their own write-up compared the story to “‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ meets ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians.’” Cute literary reference. Here’s a better one: “One Hundred Thousand Dead Cubans meets Shameless Propaganda.”
CNN even acknowledged — buried deep in the piece, of course — that “it’s hard to imagine anyone not named Castro getting away with a similar stunt.” So they know it’s nepo-dictatorship privilege. They printed it anyway. They just don’t care.
Jorge Bonilla over at Newsbusters nailed it: “The once-vaunted Cable News Network is now reduced to running crisis communications for the nepo grandbabies of Latin American communist dictators.” That about covers it.
This is who Democrats’ favorite news network really is. They’ll call Ron DeSantis an authoritarian for managing a state where people are literally fleeing TO. They’ll label parents at school board meetings “domestic terrorists.” But a communist dynasty that has driven a quarter of Cuba’s population to flee the island in just five years? That gets the lifestyle-magazine treatment.
A quarter of the country, gone. Roughly 2.7 million people have abandoned Cuba since 2020 alone. Pensions sit at $9.50 a month. Power outages stretch past 20 hours a day. And CNN’s big Cuba story is about the dictator’s grandson sipping cold beers in his generator-powered bachelor pad while complaining — without a shred of self-awareness — that Cuba needs capitalism.
Sandro even wondered aloud during the interview how he could score a visa to visit friends in Miami. Buddy, those “friends in Miami” are there because your family destroyed their country and they had to swim for their lives.
After the segment aired, Sandro promoted it on his Instagram, writing: “CNN International is getting good.” He’s not wrong. CNN has gotten very good — at laundering the reputations of the worst people on earth while calling the rest of us fascists for wanting to secure our own border.
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