Hillary Clinton hits Donald Trump with new radio ad on report he was doing business in Cuba
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton meets with attendees during a campaign stop in Fort Pierce, Fla., Friday, Sept. 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Campaign 2016 Clinton

Hillary Clinton is seizing on the media report that Donald Trump’s corporation spent $68,000 on a 1998 trip to explore business opportunities in Cuba with new radio ads in English and Spanish now airing in South Florida.

Trump denied the story, which was first reported in Newsweek, saying: “I was not involved in doing business in Cuba.”

Ultimately, neither Trump nor his companies ever did any business with the Communist island.

If true, Trump would be in violation of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR), as well as contradicting an op-ed he penned for the Miami Herald in 1999 in which he said he would  “rather lose those millions than lose my self-respect” by working with the Fidel Castro regime.

The Clinton campaign is now running a radio ad in English (“Two Trumps”) and Spanish (“Dos Caras”), blasting him for hypocrisy.

While Trump comes to Miami to sip Cuban “cafecito” and talk about human rights abuses of Castro’s communist regime, the ad says, “the other Donald thinks he’s above the law.”

“While our parents and grandparents were fighting the Castro regime both on and off the island, Donald Trump was looking to line his pockets — and even worse, those are the Castro brothers,” the narrator with the Cuban accent says.

The Newsweek story has the potential to damage the inroads Trump has been making with the state’s Cuban-American community, who according to a Florida International University poll conducted last month, narrowly support him over Clinton here in Florida, 35 percent to 31 percent.

However, sentiments in support of the Cuban embargo have been changing dramatically in recent years, so it may be questionable how Trump will be damaged by the story in Miami-Dade County.

Clinton supports ending the embargo.

The campaign did not divulge the size of the radio ad buys.

Mitch Perry

Mitch Perry has been a reporter with Extensive Enterprises since November of 2014. Previously, he served five years as political editor of the alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing. Mitch also was assistant news director with WMNF 88.5 FM in Tampa from 2000-2009, and currently hosts MidPoint, a weekly talk show, on WMNF on Thursday afternoons. He began his reporting career at KPFA radio in Berkeley and is a San Francisco native who has lived in Tampa since 2000. Mitch can be reached at [email protected].



#FlaPol

Florida Politics is a statewide, new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy, and lobbying in Florida. This platform and all of its content are owned by Extensive Enterprises Media.

Publisher: Peter Schorsch @PeterSchorschFL

Contributors & reporters: Phil Ammann, Drew Dixon, Roseanne Dunkelberger, A.G. Gancarski, Anne Geggis, Ryan Nicol, Jacob Ogles, Cole Pepper, Gray Rohrer, Jesse Scheckner, Christine Sexton, Drew Wilson, and Mike Wright.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @PeterSchorschFL
Phone: (727) 642-3162
Address: 204 37th Avenue North #182
St. Petersburg, Florida 33704




Sign up for Sunburn


Categories