Ted Cruz

firing squads.

He began executing anyone who disagreed with him.

He began seizing people's lands.

And my tia Sonia fought in the counter-revolution.

There was a whole counter-revolution of the people trying to fight back, and my tia Sonia ended up being thrown in prison and tortured by Castro's goons.

So I take it very personally.

When it comes to communism, it strikes very close to home.

If you look at the history of Cuba, starting early on from when Castro took over and made Cuba a communist dictatorship.

For decades, Cuba was effectively a satellite state of the Soviet Union.

Remember the whole Cuban Missile Crisis under JFK?

And the Soviets provided them a financial lifeline.

Look, if you're a communist, you destroy the economy.

That happens.

All across the world, communism is a great way to destroy jobs and make your people incredibly poor.

Cuba went from, it was the number one sugar producer in all of Latin America.

They just destroyed the sugar industry and everything else and brought massive poverty to Cuba.

They survived because the Soviet Union sent them money.

And they sent the money because the Soviets wanted a military satellite just 90 miles off the coast of America.

Now,

when we won the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed, suddenly that financial lifeline disappeared.