Wake-up call for Joe
Cuban Americans held a large rally outside the White House overnight from Sunday into Monday in a noisy bid to rouse President Biden to action against the island’s communist leaders.
Biden, who returned to the White House from his home of Delaware at around 4 p.m. Sunday, might have been able to hear the ruckus from his second-floor residence.
“Libertad! Libertad!” hundreds chanted after dark on Pennsylvania Avenue in a video tweeted by Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.).
The Miami Herald reported that the White House’s outdoor lights — red, white and blue to mark the Tokyo Olympics — were shut off at midnight but that the rally continued into early Monday.
Many of the rally-goers drove to DC in caravans from Florida.
Loud protests can be unnerving to occupants of the White House. For example, an initial night of anti-police brutality protests in May 2020 after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota prompted former President Donald Trump to inspect an underground bunker.
White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Biden could hear the protest as he tried to sleep.
First Lady Jill Biden wasn’t home. She returned to the White House at around 8 a.m. Monday after a trip to Japan for the Olympics.
Anti-communist Cubans have rallied outside the White House consistently since the largest antigovernment protests in a generation broke out on the island nation this month.
Biden on Thursday authorized sanctions against one Cuban official and a Cuban government agency to punish a crackdown on protesters.
But critics have called on the commander in chief to do more amid the suppression of protests — and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told The Post last week that Republicans are weighing legislation to force the president’s hand.
Biden previously said the US is investigating whether it’s technically possible to override an Internet blackout imposed by communist authorities. The lack of Internet access prevents distribution of information on protests.