09/03/2026
My grandparents fled two collapses. They escaped Spain as civil war tore it apart, rebuilt their lives in Cuba, and then watched Fidel Castro confiscate everything they had rebuilt. When they finally reached America, they carried little besides a warning I have never forgotten: When the middle class dies, the men selling simple answers arrive.
I have spent 17 years in Republican politics, and I owe my party a hard truth: The desperation those men feed on is arriving here. The gap between the wealthy and the middle class is real, it is growing, and it is unsustainable. Federal Reserve data now shows the top 1 percent of households holding nearly 32 percent of the nation’s wealth — more than the entire American middle class, the 50th through 90th percentiles, combined. The bottom half of the country holds 2.5 percent. Seven months ago, New York City, the capital of American capitalism, inaugurated a democratic socialist mayor. Voters are not imagining the disease. They are being sold the wrong diagnosis — and a cure my family has already survived twice.
- GOP Consultant, Miami native, Cuban Republican, Gabriel R. Llanes is the president of Vae Victis Strategies and a 17-year veteran of Republican politics. His grandparents fled the Spanish Civil War and, later, Fidel Castro’s Cuba….this is his latest in the Federalist.
Gabriel Llanes Media Contact:
[email protected]
A warning to my fellow Republicans: Offer Americans the hard truth, or socialists will sell them the easy lie.
