TAMPA — In the third-most populous state, rich with delegates, there has long been one Florida “do-not-touch” political third rail: Cuba.
And in south Florida, home to more than 1.3 million Cuban exiles and Cuban-American immigrants, to speak ill [How is saying everyone should have a fair and equal chance to come here legally speaking "ill" of Cubans?] of those who flee the communist island has remained a death knell.
Now Donald Trump is testing yet one more well-worn political rule: visit the state, drink a Cuban coffee (cafecito), and then rail against communist Cuba and the Castro brothers, while extending a warm welcome to those Cubans who escaped the island nation.
But the self-avowed “non-politician” who is Donald Trump has not only stepped on that third rail here, but kicked it hard without nuance.
In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times late Friday, Trump told political reporter Adam Smith that allowing Cuban immigrants legal access to the U.S under a 1966 law known as the Cuban Adjustment Act is wrong.
“I don’t think it would be fair,” Trump said in the interview. ...