Hey, everybody, it's Glenn Thrush with Politico's Off Message podcast. The Cuban trip is an amazing moment, both for the Obama administration and for the,

for the country's foreign policy at large, for a couple of reasons. First off, President

Obama just doesn't give a damn anymore. In the words of one senior former administration

official I interviewed when he was flying to Cuba,

you know, and obviously this trip got a lot of Republicans, people like Marco Rubio, up in arms,

who think that the Obama administration is just encouraging the Castro regime to go on and on and on.

This person said to me that President Obama has simply run out of F's to give.

And I think that was really on display in his press conference in Havana, where, and this is going to be one of the really famous moments, if America still pays attention to this kind of thing, where Raul Castro, who's about two heads

shorter than Barack Obama, tried to lift Obama's hand in kind of a triumphant double salute,

and Obama just let it droop.

But really, I mean, the image that really got to me, and I'm sure a bunch of you saw it,

was of Air Force One flying over the old city of Havana.

Things are going to change really rapidly in this part of the world.

And we'll get to our guest, Alan Gross, in a moment.

Alan was, of course, the subcontractor for the State Department who was imprisoned on charges relating to his activities,

bringing telecom equipment to Jewish citizens in Havana in 2011.

He served nearly five years before being released in December 2014.

So he's got a pretty unique perspective on Obama's trip to Cuba

and a very unique perspective on both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who played

not insignificant roles in his incarceration. So when we're looking at kind of overall politics,

Obama's actions are controversial. A lot of Republicans are making the argument,

and it's a serious policy argument. It's been made for years. That by extending this olive branch,

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