ELECTION/FLORIDA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “On the 58th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton addressed a group of Cuban American veterans of the failed effort to topple Fidel Castro and announced a series of crackdowns on Cuba and its allies. It was part of a call to arms to fight socialism abroad, but it was also a message for domestic consumption — particularly in Florida, the nation’s largest swing state and home to large Cuban American and Central and South American communities. With at least a half-million voters who were born in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, or Nicaragua — and more with ancestral roots in these countries — it’s a constituency that could prove pivotal in November 2020 in a state that’s essential to Trump’s reelection fortunes…The centerpiece of Bolton’s announcement of sanctions was the decision to activate a portion of the 1996 Libertad Act and allow U.S. citizens who had property seized in Cuba after Castro’s 1959 revolution to sue businesses who have profited off the ‘trafficking’ in stolen land. The industries that could be affected include port construction firms, cruise ship companies, hotels, banks, agricultural interests and rum producers.”
–Marc Caputo, “Trump’s ‘troika of tyranny’ sanctions have Florida audience in mind,” Politico, April 17, 2019 3:20 pm