Breaking ranks with nearly all of his fellow 2016 Republican contenders, Donald Trump says he supports President Barack Obama’s decision to reengage diplomatically with Cuba.
“50 years is enough,” Trump said in an interview with the Daily Caller published Tuesday, referring to Obama’s decision to re-establish U.S. ties with Cuba.
“I think it’s fine. I think it’s fine, but we should have made a better deal,” Trump added. “The concept of opening with Cuba is fine.”
Trump joins libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky as the only Republican running for president to express his support for normalizing relations with Cuba.
The rest of the GOP field has slammed Obama’s decision to reopen the U.S. embassy in Havana and engage diplomatically with the government of Cuban President Raul Castro — the brother of Cuba’s former strongman Fidel Castro.
The two Floridians running for president, former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, rejected Obama’s reset with Cuba in the strongest terms, with Rubio calling it “a lifeline for the Castro regime that will allow them to become more profitable…and allow them to become a more permanent fixture.” Florida has the largest Cuban population in the country.