Joe Biden gave an interview to Univision Orlando Tuesday. He’s in Florida to try and shore up support from Hispanic voters, given that he is losing their vote to President Trump if current polling is correct. He is also tied with Trump to win the state in general. Team Biden has pressed the panic button.

While the Biden surrogates will say that Biden can win the Electoral College in the November election with or without Florida, and that’s true, he is not going to passively hand it over to Trump. He wants to win the state as much as any presidential candidate does. For some reason, Biden thought it was a good idea to compare President Trump to Castro and this will likely backfire on him.

The problem with Team Biden is that they think voters are stupid or possess really short memories. Democrats notoriously take for granted whole blocks of voters but this doesn’t necessarily work when it’s Hispanic voters. In Florida, for example, Cuban-Americans vote more conservatively than, say, Mexican-Americans in Texas. The younger generation of Cuban-Americans has been trending more liberal than their parents and grandparents. In other words, Hispanic voters are not monolithic. Apparently, Biden thought making the Castro reference was clever.

“Trump has more in common with Castro than with Churchill,” Biden said, adding, “Look who he admires. He admires Putin, he admires Xi, he admires everyone who behaves in an authoritarian way. I am the exact opposite. I have faith in the democratic system.”

Sure, the democratic system in America has allowed good old Joe to pursue a career in politics that lasted his entire adult life and he has lived off American taxpayers for almost 50 years. He owns three homes and travels by private jet with armed guards while trashing Republicans for not believing in the hysteria of global climate change and calls for gun control. It’s good to be Joe. Now he wants another bite at the apple and a return to the White House.

I find the slam against Trump using Fidel Castro a bit odd, though, given the history of the Obama/Biden White House and Cuba. It was Barack Obama and Joe Biden that took a different path than that of their predecessors as far as a relationship with Cuba goes. Safely into his second term, Obama instructed his administration to begin work on opening discussions with Castro’s Cuban leadership. Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes had maintained a foreign policy that ruled out any concessions toward Havana unless there was regime change. A secret meeting took place in Canada in June of 2013. Pope Francis wrote to Obama and to Raul Castro to encourage them to normalize relations. On December 17, 2014, Obama and Castro announced that Washington and Havana would resume diplomatic ties. Remember the baseball game in Havana that Obama attended with Castro and the state dinner, too? Yeah, good times. So, does that make Barack Obama have more in common with Castro than Churchill since he pulled off that deal?

During the presidential campaign in 2016, Trump stood with the Cuban people and said he’d reverse Obama’s concessions if certain demands weren’t met.

“Those demands will include religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners,” Trump said in Miami, home to a large Cuban population.

The real estate billionaire said “We’re going to stand with the Cuban people in their fight against communist oppression. We’re on the right side. Great people. They are great people. The president’s one-sided deal for Cuba and with Cuba, benefits only the Castro regime.”

In the past, Trump has said he supports normalized relations, but would have preferred a better deal.

Since his election, Trump has continued to speak up for Cubans, as well as Venezuelans, too, who often flee to Florida from their own nightmare of a country.

Sleepy Joe’s hyperbole has a whiff of desperation to it. He has ignored Florida until now – less than 50 days from the November 3 election. Florida begins voting on October 24. As he prepared to board his private jet to fly to Florida Tuesday he acknowledged that he has work to do. A Florida Democrat operative cast doubt on Biden’s ability to make up for lost time.

“I will talk about how I am going to work like the devil to make sure I turn every Latino and Hispanic vote,” Biden said when asked by reporters what his message would be in the country’s largest traditional general election battleground state.

A Florida Democratic operative was pessimistic about Biden’s current position among Hispanic voters, telling The Hill, “There’s really no good answer here if you’re the Biden campaign.”

At a campaign event to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month in Kissimmee, there was a truly cringe-worthy few minutes as Biden went into a hyper-pandering mode. Luis Fonsi, a Puerto Rican-American singer, songwriter, and actor, introduced Biden to the audience. Biden came out and when he reached the podium he pulled out his cell phone and began playing music. It was Fonsi’s song, “Despacito”, a hit record in 2017. Even Biden brown-noser Ed O’Keefe, a reporter for CBS News, was surprised by the stunt.

“I just have one thing to say,” Biden began as he looked down at his phone. “Hang on here.”

He then held his phone to the microphone, which began playing the 2017 hit song “Despacito” from Luis Fonsi, who had introduced the candidate. After roughly 15 seconds of bobbing his head and gently dancing behind the podium, he paused the music.

“I’ll tell you what — if I had the talent of any one of these people, I’d be elected president by acclamation,” Biden chuckled.

“Oh my,” CBS News correspondent Ed O’Keefe reacted.

“I’d be elected president by acclamation.” Who’s the authoritarian, Joe?

Not only was the pandering overkill, but that song’s lyrics are also R-rated, to put it generously. I doubt Grandpa Joe had even heard of the song, much less listened to the lyrics before he whipped out that phone. Some staffer downloaded it for him and showed him what button to push on his phone to play it. Mercedes Schlapp, a member of the Trump White House and a first-generation Cuban-American from Miami had a tweet for that.

Does @JoeBiden realize that Despacito means “slowly”? Fits well with Slow Joe https://t.co/7i6DzWwlSH

— Mercedes Schlapp (@mercedesschlapp) September 16, 2020