Chuck Todd’s Full Exchange with Karen Bass on Her Ties To Cuba

EXCERPT:

CHUCK TODD: Let me turn to the issue of Cuba. A lot of people have turned to this issue with you as they've dug in. You spent some time there in the '70s as a young activist, I believe working with a group called the Venceremos Brigade, building houses in Cuba. You have rejected the idea that you were somehow celebrating the Castro regime. But looking back -- do you look back on that and think you were a big naïve?

REP. KAREN BASS: Oh, I think as any 19 year old would be, sure. In my early twenties, I went to Cuba to help the Cuban people, to build houses. But over the last 20 years, Chuck, I have been working -- one, I've always believed in bridging the divide between our two countries. Cuba's 90 miles away. But for the last 20 years, I've actually been working on health care related issues in Cuba. You know, the Cubans train U.S. doctors. And I've been recruiting those doctors to work in the inner city because they come in tuition free. The Cubans also have two medicines, one for diabetes, of which my mother died for, lung cancer, which my father died for, and I would like to have those drugs tested in the United States. Now, that doesn't excuse the fact that I know the Castro regime has been a brutal regime to its people. I know that there is not freedom of press, freedom of association. And interestingly, when I went in my late teens and early twenties, you know, one of the things that -- one of the reasons was to build relations with the Americans that were there, because there were over 100 young people that were there. And all of us worked on different issues. Well, what's interesting is that we had the ability to come home and protest against our own government. But the Cuban people most certainly cannot do that. They couldn't do it then and they can't do it now.

CHUCK TODD: But Congresswoman, I have to say, you sound a lot tougher on Castro now than you did when you described him as “comandante en jefe” when he died. And then you said something that I found interesting. You said you didn't quite realize how sensitive folks were in South Florida about this still.

REP. KAREN BASS: No. Oh, go ahead.

CHUCK TODD: And so I'm just curious, sort of, that you thought, well, Californians wouldn't mind that description, but it might offend Floridians. Forget that a minute. It still seemed as if you had a soft view of Castro, if you will.

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