Barack Obama had great things to say about Cuba during his recent trip to the communist enclave. The most duplicitous moment came when he conflated Fidel Castro’s takeover with the battle fought by our Founder Fathers to liberate the colonies: “Here’s my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people. The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution — America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world — these ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy.”

The comparison is quite telling in one regard — Obama has absolutely no regard for constitutional restraints, and the diktats he has imposed are something you’d expect from, well, a dictator. In Obama’s revisionist history, America and Cuba have more in common than you may think. In any case, his courteous words and kind gestures were nothing but empty rhetoric to Fidel Castro. The “retired” dictator chastised Obama in a Monday op-ed, writing, “Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama. Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old.”

Castro also lambasted the 1961 Bay of Pigs, saying, “Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded.” A few additional remarks from his lecture: “We do not need the empire to give us anything.” “No one should pretend the people of this noble and selfless country give up its glory and rights. We are able to produce food and material wealth we need with the effort and intelligence of our people.” “My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics.”

Pretty harsh words. Yet The Hill reports that Obama spokesman “Josh Earnest called Castro’s op-ed ‘an indication that the trip had its intended effect’ of pressuring the Cuban government to adopt economic and political reforms.” We don’t call it Obama’s Bay of Pigs for nothing.