OPINION:
After the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, concerns surfaced throughout the Cuban exile community that California Gov. Gavin Newsom could replace the longtime legislator with Rep. Barbara Lee, a far-left radical who has repeatedly visited Cuba and praised Fidel Castro. Fortunately, reports surfaced Sunday evening that Mr. Newsom is appointing Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler instead.
Ms. Lee may have hurt her own chances after mischaracterizing the governor’s earlier statements when rumors surfaced that Ms. Feinstein may resign. Mr. Newsom promised to appoint a Black woman since he did not do so when now-Vice President Kamala Harris vacated her Senate seat, but added that he wanted to choose someone not running in the Senate race to avoid creating an unfair advantage.
“I am troubled by the Governor’s remarks. The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election,” Ms. Lee said in a Sept. 23 online tweet.
Mr. Newsom never said such a thing, of course. Ms. Lee’s comments were a distortion of the governor’s words, potentially aimed at pressuring him into awarding her the appointment. But this is not the first time Ms. Lee has revealed her radical views or distorted reality for political advantage.
In 2001, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ms. Lee distinguished herself as the sole member of Congress to vote against authorizing the president to use necessary force against terrorism, and instead continued her push to create a new “Department of Peace.”
John Fund of The Wall Street Journal asked, “Was her no vote motivated by pacifism or anti-Americanism?” He noted that in 1984, then-U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick described Ms. Lee as someone “who always blames America first.”
When Cuban exiles rightly celebrated Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, Ms. Lee praised the brutal dictator as “a recognized world leader who was dedicated to the Cuban people,” conveniently adding that it was her “hope that we continue to build on President Obama’s efforts to end the failed embargo, lift the travel ban and normalize relations between our two countries.”
“We need to stop and pause and mourn his loss,” she soon told the San Jose Mercury News of the Cuban dictator, adding: “I was very sad for the Cuban people. He led a revolution that led social improvements for his people.”
In 2018, Ms. Lee bragged about her time in Cuba, a dictatorship that millions of its citizens have fled to escape torture, forced labor, and orchestrated starvation to control its population. On Jan. 29, 2018, Ms. Lee used her congressional website to boast that she had visited Cuba more than two dozen times in the past four decades, recalling how she and Castro exchanged praise since she first visited the island in 1977.
In a 2009 memo, Castro said there was “unbeatable proof” of Ms. Lee’s “moral courage,” praising her as the sole vote against President George W. Bush’s “genocidal war in Iraq.”
Five years after Castro’s death, Ms. Lee and three other pro-Cuba congressional representatives, Bobby Rush, James McGovern and Gregory Meeks, were the leading signatories of a December 2021 letter calling upon President Biden to reverse sanctions against Cuba’s military dictatorship.
Mr. Rush, who met both Fidel and Raul Castro with Ms. Lee in 2009, told the Huffington Post, “I’m a person who can bear witness to significant human rights violations right here in America. In my own state there is strong, convincing evidence that there were people on death row who were tortured,” adding that after meeting with Fidel Castro, “It was almost like listening to an old friend.”
Mr. McGovern told the Worcester Sun in 2016: “They all complain about the lack of democracy in Cuba. I’m concerned about the lack of democracy in Congress.”
None of this should come as a surprise. Ms. Lee’s mischaracterizations can be traced to the start of her political career as an aide to Rep. Ron Dellums, whose Vietnam-era anti-war views led him to sue President George H.W. Bush for defending Kuwait against Iraq’s invasion.
Shortly after the U.S. invaded Grenada in 1983, freed a group of American medical students and deposed a Marxist regime that was building an airfield with Cuban personnel, Dellums and his staff conducted a “fact-finding mission” to the island, aimed at proving the airfield could not be used for military purposes.
Dellums’ office prepared a report of their findings and offered to make changes at the Castro regime’s direction, according to documents recovered by U.S. troops.
“Barbara Lee is here presently and has brought with her a report on the international airport done by Ron Dellums,” the documents read. “They have requested that we look at the document and suggest any changes we deem necessary. They will be willing to make changes.”
Although the documents revealed the airfield would be “used for Cuban and Soviet military,” Dellums’ report to Congress inaccurately stated that “nothing being done in Grenada constitutes a threat to the United States or her allies,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Earlier this year, the Journal exposed China and Russia’s intentions to build new Cuba spy bases “focusing on [the] U.S.”
Barbara Lee’s mischaracterization of Mr. Newsom’s comments is not an anomaly. Her decades-long political career demonstrates a pattern of confusing good and evil, vilifying America and its leaders while praising foreign dictators and putting radical politics above the truth with disregard to U.S. interests.
An earlier version of this story referenced an incorrect date on a letter calling on President Biden to reverse sanctions, it was from December 2021.
• Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former senior adviser and director of the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting from 2017 to 2021. He now serves as a member of The Washington Times’ editorial board.
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