Old Fidel Castro interview resurfaces in attack ad against Miami congresswoman

Sofia Saric, Miami Herald on Oct 18, 2026

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Former CBS Miami journalist Eliott Rodriguez posted an attack ad Saturday against Miami Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, claiming she “cozied up” to Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro to secure an exclusive interview with him.

“She cozied up to a dictator and, now, she is cozying up to another wannabe dictator, Donald Trump,” Rodriguez, who is challenging incumbent Salazar in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, said during the commercial.

Her response: to accuse her opponent of being even cozier with the dictator-run nation by aligning with donors who want to re-open the U.S. relationship with Cuba.

Both Salazar and Rodriguez are Cuban Americans, who are former journalists. They are both vying for a seat in a heavily Hispanic district in Miami-Dade, which includes Little Havana. In the commercial, the snippets of Salazar show her 1990s sit down with the late Communist leader. Rodriguez claimed Salazar praised the revolution, “saying all these wonderful things” about Castro during the interview.

“You, Comandante, the man who captured the imagination of the entire world in the 1960s,” Salazar said to Castro, according to the commercial. She later referred to speaking about the revolution “as somewhat romantic” at the time, the commercial shows.

Rodriguez also included footage of him following Castro down a hallway after a press conference in Cuba. He said in the commercial he wanted to ask Castro tough questions about democracy, political prisoners and efforts to have free elections in Cuba, but Castro’s bodyguard shoved him out of the way. It was a much different story during Salazar’s interview with Castro, Rodriguez said.

It’s not the first time bits of the interview have been used against her in a political ad. In 2018, Stephen Marks put together a commercial that highlighted excerpts from the sit-down while running against Salazar in the Republican primary for Florida’s 27th congressional district.

“Recycling clips unsuccessfully used by prior Salazar opponents will not shield Eliott from the fact that he is backing a democratic socialist for Senate nor that he is funded by a who’s who of donors seeking to normalize relations with the Cuban dictatorship,” Ana Carbonell, a spokesperson for the Salazar campaign, told the Miami Herald.

During a July 2018 interview on WPLG, Salazar said she tried to play the Castro interview “down the middle” as an impartial journalist. The interview with Castro was “an hour long and there are many segments where I’m tough,” she said.

“I have been one of the staunchest, most hardest critics of the Cuban revolution on the air, and for this guy to come on the air and say I’m a Communist, I am livid,” Salazar told WPLG.