Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series Real Time with Bill Maugh.

We are. We're back. We were going to get to Cuba and we ran out of time and I know you

want to disagree with me and you don't even know what I'm going to say.

Well, I want to hear what you have to say.

Well, I mean, I think I said it in the monologue. We have, or somewhere in this show, we have

stood with worst dictators. I think Cuba in the Freedom Watch list is 60 second out of

177 countries, one being the worst. So it's behind China, I think Iran, Egypt, which is not

a great place to be, but it's ahead of a number of our allies like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

So I guess where I'm coming from is that the United States has all of the leverage in this situation.

And if you're looking at what Royal Castro's plan is, I believe the plan is not to do what China

and Vietnam have done, not to have a kind of, you know, basically move away from the socialist economy.

I believe they're looking to Vladimir Putin. They're looking to, you know,

Chavez is Venezuela. They want to have sham elections and he wants to install his son or his

son-in-law in power. And we're allowing that to happen. Now, we have all the leverage. I believe

we should open up to Cuba and I believe we should normalize relations. But we can, we can

demand a lot more because they're at the most vulnerable point. This is what we're going on for 15

years. No, it hasn't been going on because what I'm saying is that actually we should open up,

but we can now demand more from them in terms of how they treat their citizens and also having

an open and competitive political problems. These things take time. Of course, it takes time.

Of course, it's, it's, it's weak. But we're never going to have the leverage that we do right now.

They used to look to Russia and then Venezuela for cash. Exactly.

For cash. For cash. Now they can't. They're 90 miles away from the world's largest economy.

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