Posted on 06/16/2017 6:08:47 PM PDT by ColdOne
In Miami, the crowd was standing and cheering Friday as President Trump smiled broadly after pledging to reverse key provisions of the Obama administration’s historic Cuba opening.
A world away, in Portland, Maine, Ben Rhodes could not contain his frustration.
“The few people in Miami enabling Trump in carrying out this charade should be embarrassed/held accountable,” Rhodes wrote on Twitter. “He could care less about Cubans.”
It was the first of four tweets Rhodes, a foreign policy aide to former president Barack Obama, fired off attacking Trump as the president was speaking. Rhodes was in Maine to attend the wedding of a fellow Obama alum, speechwriter Jon Favreau, but that had not stopped him from fighting back against Trump. In the morning, Rhodes had published an essay on The Atlantic’s website titled, “Trump’s Cuba Policy Will Fail.”
For Rhodes, the moment represented both a policy setback for the United States — and a personal letdown. He had played a leading role in the secret, high-wire negotiations with the Castro regime that led to the restoration of diplomatic ties in 2015 after 54 years. That role was so meaningful that it is highlighted in Rhodes’ Twitter bio: “Obama foreign policy adviser and speechwriter. Mets fan, Cuba negotiator, dad to Ella and Chloe.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sour puss
Cry me a river while I play a song for you on the world’s smallest violin.
America is not, nor ever was, to blame for the horrendous state of Cuba’s economy. Castro’s mass murdering Communist regime is.
WINNING!
WINNING!
So SWEET!
Negotiations?? Cuba has STILL been doing whatever it wants as it had NO pushback from the previous Admin! Trump can change most of the feckless EOs that Obama put in place. If you wants something to stay, it better go through Congress!
Trump’s speech today brought a tear to my eye.
I don’t know how any American could watch President Trump today and not cheer him.
You lost. Don’t be bitter; be better.
Rhodes is right about one thing.
Trump could care less about Cubans.
Much less.
Boo.
Freaking.
Hoo.
President Trump is erasing obozo’s legacy quickly. Soon, it will be ALMOST like that 1/2 white 100% muslim liberal never existed. Some damage he did will never heal but his legacy will be mostly GONE.
Ben Rhodes is also the POS behind Obozo’s Iran policy and fake nuclear agreement.
He admitted concocting fake “narratives” to sell to the MSM and the public.
Ben Rhodes is a vile master of libtard #FakeNews.
Rhodes is an Iranian, ISIS retard.
...“The few people in Miami enabling Trump in carrying out this charade should be embarrassed/held accountable...
Translation ...they should be shot.
Too bad loser snowflake.
Are you planning to clear up the meaning of your post?
I’m sure there’s a custom tumbrel with Ben’s name on it...
Well, doesn't my heart bleed for you, cupcake. Better that metaphorical dagger than a real bullet from one of your miserable comrades in arms. How tone deaf do you have to be to use a metaphor like that today?
The great thing g about the Gitmo lease, for just under $5,000 per year, can ONLY end when BOTH parties agree to it. They haven’t cashed their yearly lease check since 1959. That invalidates nothing. The lease dates back to it’s beginning in 1902. Trump won’t be giving it back like Carter did with Panama with the Panama Canal.
What, no government worker to chew their food for them.
One of the most heart warming articles that I have ever read.
But “personally, part of what makes it difficult [to accept] is that we were six years into the administration and spent a year and a half of exhaustive negotiations before announcing” the Cuba opening, said Rhodes, who coincidentally spoke at a Cuban entrepreneurship event in Miami on Monday. “They seemed to do this in such a slipshod way. Years of work and painstaking negotiations are countered by what feels like very minimal work and thought.”
Rhodes isn’t the only Obama administration veteran who seems to be experiencing personal pain as Trump strips away portions of the 44th president’s legacy — on immigration, trade, the environment and, perhaps, health care. Ensconced in think tanks in Washington and New York, or in the private sector on both coasts, the Obama alumni network has become a diaspora of the disappointed as Trump tries to make good on his promises to upend much of what they had worked to accomplish.
“I felt short of breath and like there was a dagger in my heart,” said Wendy Cutler, former acting deputy U.S. trade ambassador who spent three years helping negotiate the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord from which Trump withdrew the United States on his third day in office.
Cutler, now a vice president at the Asia Society, had left USTR on an emotional high one week after she had been among the U.S. delegation in Atlanta in Oct. 2015 when the TPP, the largest regional pact in history, was completed.
On Jan. 23, when Trump held an Oval Office event to announce the U.S. withdrawal, Cutler was in her eighth-floor office in Dupont Circle. She couldn’t bear to watch.
“When I give speeches, a lot of Asian colleagues are stunned,” Cutler said. “Even though they watched the campaign and knew the agreement was in trouble, they cannot come to terms with how quickly this happened.”
Every transfer of the White House between political parties means a sharp shift of policy focus. But the handoff between Obama and Trump has been particularly disorienting, given their polar opposite views of the world and rhetorical means of expressing it.
Obama tried to buck up his staff a day after Trump’s election victory during a speech in the Rose Garden, when he told scores of somber-looking aides, some tearful, to keep their “heads up.” But it has been increasingly difficult.
For Cecilia Muñoz, who spent two decades as a leading immigrant rights advocate before serving as Obama’s White House domestic policy adviser, the Trump wrecking ball followed her to the end of the earth.
After serving eight years in the Obama White House, Muñoz had booked a hiking vacation in New Zealand to begin the day after Obama left office January 20 — traveling as far from the United States as she could get.
Six days after she arrived in New Zealand, however, Trump announced a sweeping travel ban on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, sowing chaos at several airports as federal authorities detained dozens of travelers.
“I checked in [on the news] a couple times a day to be aware of what was happening, much to my husband’s dismay,” said Muñoz, now a vice president at the New America think tank. “Then I worked off my feelings on the hikes.”
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