Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) didn’t hold back during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, taking a hard line against the governments of Cuba and Iran.
During the interview, the Florida congressman laid out a case for a total overhaul of the Cuban leadership and expressed deep concern over the current state of Iranian nuclear enrichment.
Addressing the situation in Havana, Donalds called for “full-scale regime change” to end what he described as 67 years of communist suppression. He criticized current Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, suggesting the leader’s rhetoric was a deceptive attempt to maintain an “iron fist” over a struggling nation.
Donalds pointed to the island’s failing economy, power grid failures, and food rationing as evidence that the current system is broken.
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“What you just heard was a dictator who wants to have the same deal as the Castro brothers,” Donalds said, noting that Díaz-Canel’s claims that Cuba could improve without systemic changes were, in his view, a lie.
The conversation then shifted to the Middle East, where Donalds addressed the threat of a nuclear-armed Tehran. He argued that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is a “core mission” and a long-standing priority for the administration.
Donalds was critical of the shift in policy between the first Trump term and the Biden administration, claiming that previous sanctions had successfully crippled the Iranian economy before they were rolled back.
According to Donalds, the lifting of those pressures allowed the Iranian government to “reconstitute their economy” and resume enrichment processes. He characterized the Iranian leadership as a “theocratic regime” focused on spreading terror globally for nearly five decades.
“A nuclear Iran is just simply unacceptable because that is a theocratic regime who is hell-bent on global jihad,” Donalds stated, emphasizing that every available lever of power must be used to bring the situation under control once and for all.
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