President Donald Trump told CNN host Dana Bash on Friday that Cuba’s communist government is on the brink of collapse, adding that he would soon send Secretary of State Marco Rubio to handle the situation in the Caribbean island nation.
Bash reported that she spoke with Trump on multiple issues across the globe, including the war with Iran and the situation bubbling over in Cuba. Trump told Bash, “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon,” adding that the United States has “plenty of time, but Cuba is ready.” Bash also said that Trump told her he would soon “put Marco over there.”
Rubio, whom Trump has called the “greatest secretary of State in U.S. history,” is the son of Cuban parents who immigrated to the United States just before Fidel Castro seized power. Throughout his political career, Rubio has hoped for the Cuban people to free themselves from communist rule. Now, Rubio has a chance to help turn that hope into reality as he will likely play the most important role in U.S. efforts to stabilize Cuba.
The communist Cuban regime is in the middle of a major economic collapse, with inflation rising out of control and the country’s infrastructure continuing to fall apart. The economic situation in Cuba deteriorated further after the United States successfully captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and took control of Venezuela’s oil exports. After Trump’s action, the Venezuelan government stopped shipping oil to Cuba, and the U.S. military has been intercepting ships from other nations attempting to offload fuel in Cuba, The New York Times reported. The Cuban government is believed to have just a few weeks of fuel supply left before the country goes into a blackout.
A United Nations official in Cuba said last week that the situation in the country is “becoming fragile,” with food security also “deteriorating.”
As Trump rewrites the rules of America’s foreign policy strategy, he has set his sights on Cuba, but a major military operation targeting the country appears unlikely at the moment. Instead, Trump suggested a “friendly takeover” of the country last week.
“The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble, as you know. They have no money, no anything right now,” Trump said. “Maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba. We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba.”
As the crisis in Cuba worsens, the Cuban government said that its troops shot and killed multiple people on a speedboat from Florida that it accused of opening fire on Cuban soldiers just off the country’s coast. At least five people aboard the speedboat were killed, and Cuba charged the five surviving crew members with terrorism. Rubio said that the incident was not a U.S.-backed operation.
For decades, Cuba remained a thorn in America’s side as the island nation, just 100 miles off the Florida coast, was closely allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 is still considered the closest the world has ever come to full-scale nuclear war, and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion on the southwestern coast of Cuba remains one of the biggest U.S. military failures in history.
