Cuban immigrant at Trump roundtable: Communism "destroyed" my country, don’t let it destroy yours

During a roundtable event with President Donald Trump in Florida on Friday, Cuban-born businessman Maximo Alvarez warned Americans about the dangers of communism and socialism, telling young people not to be “useful idiots.” He also stressed the importance of American values. Alvarez is the founder, owner, and president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors. He came to the United States as a 13-year-old. “Almost 60 years later, I am sitting next to the President of the United States, talking about the American dream,” he said of his unlikely story. He then went on to talk about his experiences as a child in Cuba, comparing the rise of communism in that country, spearheaded by Fidel Castro, with the current situation in the United States. “What is happening in our backyard today I experienced as an 11-year-old. I remember vividly all of the promises that a guy named Castro gave and how 99 percent of the people swallowed the pill. It took many years. Later, after I read somebody named Saul Alinsky, that I realized that all those people were nothing but useful idiots.” Alinsky was a left-wing activist in the United States, famous for his book Rules for Radicals, which explained how to successfully run a movement for change. “I remember all of the promises that we hear today: about free education, and free health care, and (a) free land,” he recounted. Freedom never came about, “but he never said that until after he was in power and got rid of all of the police, got rid of all of the military.” Castro and his system of government have “been there for the last 60 years and counting and he destroyed each and every one who helped him, the Catholic Church, everybody.” Alvarez mentioned that Castro, the leader of the communist movement in Cuba who ran the country as a communist dictator for many decades, was once asked whether he actually was a communist. “He went crazy,” Alvarez recounted. Castro claimed to be a Catholic, educated by the Jesuits, who was even supported by some priests... He also indicated that America was “the only country” needing to close its borders, “because everybody in the world wants to come over here.” “Nobody is ever forced to come over here. We come over here, in my case, because my parents chose that I would not be indoctrinated by the communist country (of Cuba under Fidel Castro), by the totalitarian country, by the totalitarian regime,” Alvarez emphasized. “They don’t educate children, absolutely not, and this is something that we need to understand.” “Please understand what has happened in our country, see what has happened to our parents, and see what is happening to America today,” Alvarez pleaded... Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders had, like Castro in Cuba, as Alvarez explained, called for free education by abolishing college tuition and canceling all student debt. Several Democrat legislators have also called for free health care, often termed “Medicare for All.”