Former top Obama aide accuses Biden of 'gaslighting' Cuba

New York, September 16 (RHC)-- The former Obama White House official who negotiated the reopening of relations with Cuba sharply criticized President Biden's policies toward the island, saying his administration is "gaslighting" Havana by maintaining and even expanding harsh sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump.

In an interview with Yahoo News "Conspiracyland" podcast, Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama's deputy national security adviser, said that "disappointed doesn't begin to scratch the surface of how I feel about the Biden-Cuba policy."

 "The Cuban government made an agreement with me based on the idea that they could trust that we would keep our agreement, "he said.

After acknowledging that it was Trump who initially reversed Obama's policy of normalizing relations with Cuba, he added that Biden has doubled down" on Trump policies.

"Why would any Cuban official ever, ever negotiate anything with America ever again after this? We had Trump — in the most grotesque, callous way — politicizing this. But then to have a Democratic administration legitimize what Trump did by continuing it — it's gaslighting those people in Cuba.

Acquiescing to the most vocal anti-Cuban US lawmakers and right-wing sectors, the Trump Administration reversed the Obama Cuba policies by adopting over 240 measures to tighten the blockade. Despite his presidential race's promises to undo all those measures, Joe Biden has kept almost all those measures unchanged.