By: Rusty Brooks
“I still have relatives that live in Cuba,” Nicole Malliotakis said in a recent interview with City & State New York. “I know the oppression that they live under. We need to do what we can as a nation to continue to be the leader of the free world and try to promote freedom and democracy everywhere. It’s certainly something of interest to me as the daughter of a Cuban refugee.”
The newly elected 11th Congressional District NY Congresswoman that encompasses Staten Island borough and a swath of southern Brooklyn, is taking direct aim at fellow NY congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ‘squad’ of far-left comrades in congress; Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)
Malliotakis is part Cuban, making her the 10th Cuban American in congress.
She told City & State;” Senator Marco Rubio supported me, as did Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American from Miami. I know Maria Elvira Salazar, who was just elected, also representing Miami, and I also met Carlos Giménez, who is the mayor (of Miami-Dade County), now elected (to the House) also on Tuesday. There is going to be a Cuban Caucus there. I think it’s important, because Cuban-Americans know more than anyone what socialism and communism mean and are very vigilant when it comes to individuals who want to take away any freedoms or liberties or move us down a path to socialism. Our voices are going to be significant. We may have a little anti-socialist squad forming in Congress.
Countering AOC’s leftist leanings is personal for Malliotakis, whose mother fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba in 1959.
“We all have stories we want to share with the American people’, she said in reference to her 3 other anti-socialist ideological counterparts, Florida’s Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar and Indiana’s Victoria Spartz.
Gimenez, born in Cuba, and Spartz, from Ukraine, both grew up under communist regimes. Salazar, like Malliotakis, is the daughter of a Cuban refugee.
“It’s a natural alliance that has formed. We share very similar backgrounds and have the same concerns,” Malliotakis said.
“We don’t have a name; we’re not in high school,” she said — although, she admitted, “freedom squad” has a nice ring to it.
“But we have a shared concern that socialism is encroaching, little by little, into our society, and our freedoms and liberties are threatened,” she said. “Our families fled from oppressive countries with the very same policies that AOC and the Squad are promoting.”
