Trump Campaign Press Release - Joe Biden Eyes Castro-Lover Karen Bass for VP as She Misrepresents the Communist Group She Led

The Venceremos Brigade was not a humanitarian organization, it was a communist group that trained in guerrilla warfare.

"The fact that Joe Biden is even considering a communist sympathizer like Karen Bass as a potential vice president proves that no matter who he selects as his running mate, he has been compromised by the radical left and must be rejected by the American people in November—our way of life depends on it," said Mercedes Schlapp, Trump 2020 Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications. "As the daughter of a former Cuban political prisoner, I can tell you that Bass' description of the Venceremos Brigade is grossly deceptive and offensive to Cuban Americans. The Venceremos Brigade is a radical Marxist group that was conceptualized by Fidel Castro and managed by his regime's top spy agency. The Cuban dictatorship used Venceremos to recruit young American leftists under the guise of humanitarian work that concealed its true objectives, which were to weaken American democracy and destabilize our hemisphere. This history is disqualifying for her, and disqualifying for Joe Biden for considering her as a running mate."

"I view myself as a transition candidate," Joe Biden said in April. That's one reason it's widely believed that "Biden's vice president could be the most powerful in history," according to The Atlantic. Given Biden's weakness and inability to stand up to the far-left radicals running the Democrat Party, it's incredibly troubling that he would even consider choosing a communist Castro-lover like Rep. Karen Bass to be one heartbeat away from the presidency.

Biden's "VP pick is in many ways his political living will," said Trump 2020 Senior Advisor Jason Miller. No matter who it is, it's clear Biden is simply an empty vessel and a trojan horse for whatever the radical left wants.

Facing scrutiny, Rep. Karen Bass is misleading Americans about her past. This morning, Bass portrayed the Venceremos Brigade as a humanitarian organization, but according to official congressional testimony, contemporaneous news reports, and a Cuban exile news outlet, the Brigade was in fact a Marxist-Leninist front group designed to subvert American democracy:

1. According to CiberCuba, the organization was "one of the Cuban regime's most ambitious intelligence operations against the United States."
   
2. CiberCuba also noted that the Venceremos Brigade was "a political initiative promoted by Fidel Castro himself" under the guise of humanitarian activism. Its true mission was to "recruit agents" in the United States to "penetrate" U.S. institutions, "export the [Cuban] revolution across the entire continent," and ultimately, to undermine "the interests of the American people."
   
3. Bass was not merely a member of the Brigade. She led its Southern California operations. Tablet Magazine reported that an October 1975 edition of the communist Daily World newspaper described Bass as the "leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California." Another Ph.D. dissertation documented that as "a 'brigadista' and then organizer for the Venceremos Brigades, Karen visited Cuba every 6 months."
   
4. According to expert Senate testimony, Venceremos' members were trained in explosives. While Bass was leading the Brigade's efforts in California, the New York Times reported that three police explosive experts testified before the Senate that the Brigade's "members were taught how to make bombs while in Cuba."
   
5. Even today, Bass is parroting communist propaganda about the Venceremos Brigade. By continuing to describe Venceremos as a group of anti-war young American social activists, Bass is promoting the Cuban government's myths about this radical organization to conceal its actual mission. According to CiberCuba, since at least December 1969, the Castro regime has used its state-run media to present the group "as the result of an idea that emerged among young Americans in solidarity with the Cuban people" in order to "to divert attention away from the true purposes and objectives that the Cuban regime was pursuing with the Brigade."

"A vote for a Biden-Bass ticket would be a slap in the face to all those Cuban dissidents and exiles who arduously worked for freedom," said Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez.

"I don't believe in the last six decades there's ever been someone considered for the vice presidency with this level of sympathy for the Castro regime," added Florida Senator Marco Rubio. "If, God forbid, Bass is elected Vice President she'll be the highest ranking Castro sympathizer in the history of the U.S. government."