Maximo Alvarez, a successful American businessman who fled the communist regime of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, offered a powerful testimony Monday in support of President Donald Trump. Alvarez warned Americans of the alternative presented by the Democrats nomination of the most progressive ticket in recent memory.
“I’m speaking to you today because I’ve seen people like this before,” Alvarez told the convention. “I’ve seen movements like this before. I’ve seen ideas like this before and I’m here to tell you, we cannot let them take over our country.”
Throughout the seven-minute speech delivered on the first night of the Republican National Convention, Alvarez shared his family’s story fleeing the oppressive regime just 100 miles off Florida’s coast.
“I’ve heard the promises of Fidel Castro, and I cannot forget those who grew up around me, who looked like me, who suffered, and starved, and died because they believed those empty promises. They swallowed the communist poison pill,” he said.
“By the grace of God, I lived the American dream, the greatest blessing I ever had,” said Alvarez, who now serves as the president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors. “My dad, who only had a 6th grade education told me, ‘Don’t leave this place. You will never be as lucky as me … There is no place to hide.'”
Alvarez’s address come as the Democrats put forward the most radical pair of presidential candidates in decades who have pledged $10 trillion in programs that would lead the American people on a path of dependency with government health care, free higher education and “environmental justice.”
“They don’t sound radical to my ears,” Alvarez said. “They sound familiar.”
On Friday, Biden said he would be open to implementing a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus if White House advisors recommended such an action.
