The image to the left is from a south Florida WLRM publication which accuses Senator Marco Rubio of Hypocrisy. The accusation is that Rubio criticized former President Obama for the same thing current President Trump did, namely meeting a dictator. The double standard is a type of hypocrisy but not as strong as if, say, Obama would have denounced the Trump/Kim meeting (he has not done so as of the day of this post).
The article has a short quote from Rubio on the Obama/Castro meeting and from Rubio on the Trump/Kim meeting.
However, the article brings up an additional point which is important, namely, what did the US get out of the meeting. There is good reason to differentiate between summits that achieve good results and those that don't.
So what did the US get out of the Obama meeting with Raul Castro? There was a release of some political prisoners (some of whom were rearrested soon after Obama left Cuba). What did the US give up? There were some economic and travel restrictions that were reduced or eliminated. The US placed diplomatic personnel in Cuba but then removed the personnel. Many of the diplomatic personnel had contracted illness in Cuba. The US concessions to Cuba were canceled by Trump in mid 2017.
What did the US get out of the Trump meeting with Kim Jung Un? Several political prisoners were released before the meeting. More importantly, North Korea abandoned the testing of bombs and missiles and declared it policy to denuclearize the Korean peninsula before the Trump/Kim meeting. Some of the North Korea WMD sites are in the process of being destroyed by the North Koreans as of the date of this post. Of course, the eventual results of this overall process are as yet unknown.
There is another important difference between the two meetings. In the case of the Trump/Kim meeting, South Korea had played an independent and also intermediary role and had it's own summit between North and South Korean leaders before the US meeting. In addition Kim visited China before the North/South Korea event. No U.S. friendly nation played such a role in the Trump/Castro meeting although both Canada and the Vatican contacts were used for logistical arrangements.
The WLRM article is here.
Article of CubaUS thaw is here.
News of re-arrest of Cuban prisoners released is here.
News of illness of US diplomatic personnel in Cuba is here.
Article on US/North Korea summit is here.
Irwin sent me a link to a video of people criticizing Obama and/or praising Trump for summitry with dictators. That had a lot of very short statements and so was difficult to analyze.
