The co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America struggled to defend his organization's public tribute to Fidel Castro when a CNN anchor confronted him with a personal story of Castro's political imprisonment, and he was not the only DSA leader to falter under basic questioning.
Ashik Siddique, co-chair of the DSA, appeared on CNN opposite anchor Boris Sanchez after the left-wing group issued a statement commemorating Castro's 100th birthday. The statement called the Cuban dictator "a stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle." Sanchez did not let the framing pass unchallenged. He told Siddique his own grandfather had been a revolutionary in Cuba, and that Castro had locked him up for it.
Sanchez told Siddique on air:
"Fidel Castro locked my grandfather up, sentenced to 20 years for doing what you're doing now on live TV, for speaking his mind, for expressing himself freely, for trying to organize politically."
Then Sanchez pressed the DSA leader directly, asking how the group's praise for Castro "lands with people who suffered under that dictatorship who now you were trying to court as voters when your organization comes out and lauds 100 years of Castro."
Siddique did not answer the question. He pivoted to income inequality and criticism of the U.S. government, a pattern that repeated throughout the exchange.
When Sanchez asked point-blank whether Castro was "a beacon of democracy," Siddique admitted he "wouldn't say that" about the dictator. But rather than reckon with the DSA's own language praising Castro, he shifted to a familiar talking point.
"I think that the revolution in Cuba led to an expansion of things like universal healthcare. That's actually been a model. Cuba exports medical care to countries that have very poor infrastructure themselves."
So the DSA's co-chair would not call Castro a democrat, but his organization still honored the man's centennial by calling him a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle. The gap between the concession and the tribute went unresolved.
Siddique also offered a broader defense of the DSA's goals, saying the group wants to "expand democracy everywhere in the United States, in Cuba, and everywhere else." He added that democracy "does not come at the barrel of a gun" and "doesn't come under the threat of economic blockade." The implication, that U.S. policy, not Castro's regime, was the real obstacle to Cuban democracy, drew a sharp response from Sanchez.
"So putting out a statement about Fidel Castro courts those people?"
Sanchez closed the exchange by suggesting the DSA should "have more conversations with folks who have fled that regime and what they think about these statements and the position of the DSA." It was a polite way of saying the organization had not bothered to consult the people most affected by the dictator it chose to celebrate. The DSA's willingness to honor Castro fits a broader pattern of controversial statements from the group's leadership that have drawn public scrutiny.
Siddique's performance was not an isolated episode. His fellow co-chair, Megan Romer, fared no better when she sat for an interview on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast, posted August 7. Host David Remnick asked Romer to define what the DSA means when it talks about "taxing the h*** out of millionaires." She could not produce a clear answer.
"Uhhhh, yeah, you know, again, I don't have like a solid [answer]... but I think-"
Remnick cut in: "But shouldn't you?"
Romer's response meandered through abstractions about democracy, exploitation, and tax bases without arriving at a number, a rate, or a policy framework. She said the group does not "want to depend on the existence of millionaires because that means people are still getting exploited" and that they "need to look at what we need to pay for in the interim." For a movement that has been gaining real traction in Democratic primaries, the inability to explain a core policy plank to a sympathetic interviewer was revealing.
A third DSA figure, Dr. Frances Gill, a delegate on the group's political committee, ran into similar trouble on NBC Los Angeles. Anchor Conan Nolan asked Gill a direct question rooted in the DSA's stated goals of defunding police and ending the prison system.
"If my daughter is assaulted and raped, is there any agency that would seek to find her assailant and bring him to justice?"
Gill said "of course" a rapist would be held accountable but urged Nolan to "avoid getting caught in hypotheticals and talk more about the reality." For a voter listening at home, a question about whether a rapist would face justice is not a hypothetical. It is about as concrete as public safety gets.
Rather than explain what institution would replace the police and prisons the DSA wants to eliminate, Gill pivoted to spending. She argued the country spends "absolutely outrageous amounts of money on police and policing" and not enough "on things that actually make people safe and feel safe." Her example of what does make people safe: well-lit streets. She cited Los Angeles's broken streetlights, the city reportedly has a backlog leaving tens of thousands of streetlights without power due to widespread copper wire theft, as evidence that better infrastructure, not law enforcement, is the answer to violent crime.
Street lighting instead of a police response to rape. That was the DSA's answer on camera.
Three interviews. Three DSA leaders. Three failures to defend the organization's own positions under even mildly adversarial questioning. Siddique could not reconcile praising Castro with courting Cuban-American voters. Romer could not put a number on her tax policy. Gill could not name the institution that would investigate a sexual assault in a world without police or prisons.
These are not gotcha questions from hostile interviewers. Sanchez, Remnick, and Nolan each asked the most basic version of the most obvious follow-up. And in each case, the DSA representative defaulted to vague abstractions, ideological slogans, or outright deflection. The organization has been winning real elections and pulling the Democratic Party leftward. Its candidates have unseated well-funded opponents. Its ideas are shaping primary debates across the country.
Yet its leaders cannot explain those ideas in plain English when a camera is on. That disconnect raises a question the DSA's growing roster of elected officials will eventually have to answer: if the people running the organization cannot defend its platform to a journalist, how will they defend it to constituents?
The gap between the DSA's electoral ambitions and its leaders' inability to articulate basic policy has created friction even within the broader Democratic coalition. Some state party leaders have openly balked at endorsing DSA-backed primary winners, a sign that the organization's ideological baggage is becoming harder for mainstream Democrats to carry.
And the DSA's relationship with its own allies can be slippery. Some politicians who have benefited from DSA support and resources have later distanced themselves from the socialist label when facing a general electorate, a pattern that suggests even the DSA's friends understand the brand is a liability once the primary is over.
An organization that honors dictators, cannot define its own tax policy, and answers questions about violent crime with a lecture on streetlights is not a serious governing movement. It is a slogan factory that keeps running out of slogans at the worst possible moment.
