Ben Rhodes

Because with Iran, you at least know they could be talking about nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.

Cuba has nothing to trade away in talks.

There's no threat.

They don't support drug—they're actually very anti-drug trafficking.

So what you're trying to negotiate, I guess, is regime change, which is how does a regime negotiate its own collapse?

Maybe they can come up with something, like release some political prisoners.

I don't know what, but it's not going to be enough for Marco Rubio because he wants regime change.

And the thing I'm just going to complain about here—

Amen.

Is it like, you know, in the Obama years, we get all the scrutiny about, you know, what are you doing on the human rights questions?

And we did a lot, by the way.

We got a lot of political prisoners out.

We got Internet in that country.

But you know what?

Like you get this focus on like the treatment of dissidents in Cuba.

That's important.

But starving millions of people is worse for human rights than even like dozens of dissidents being imprisoned.

Why is that not a human rights problem?

Why is U.S.

policy being basically a collective punishment of Cubans, largely Afro-Cubans, I should note?