President Obama is taking another major step in normalizing relations with Cuba:
Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years, in what would be a crucial turning point between the Cold War rivals that recently shed their decades-old hostilities.
Obama will visit the communist island nation in the coming weeks, a senior administration official told NBC News, adding that the details would be announced Thursday as part of a larger tour by Obama of Latin America.
Obama made it official via Twitter Thursday morning:
In addition to the pre-existing Republican outrage that Obama dared change a policy that had been a clear failure for decades now, cue the whining about the president visiting Cuba, the site of one of his major diplomatic efforts, but not attending the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama will pay his respects to Scalia as his body lies at the Supreme Court the day before the funeral, and Vice President Joe Biden will attend the funeral. Because there will always be outrage from the right when this president does a thing or doesn’t do a thing, whatever those things may be.