The Trump administration on Thursday turned up the heat on Cuba, calling it a “failed country” and pledging that the US would take unspecified action to right it.
“It’s a failed country, everybody knows it,” President Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “They don’t have electricity, they don’t have money, they don’t have really anything… and we’re going to help them along.”
“Other presidents have looked at doing something for 50, 60 years, and it looks like I’ll be the one that does it,” he added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday called Cuba’s political and economic system “broken,” accusing its leaders of trying to “buy time and wait us out” as the US ramps up the pressure on Havana.
“Their system doesn’t work right. Their economic system does not work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place,” Rubio said.
The top US diplomat argued Havana’s leaders have spent years stalling for time instead of pursuing meaningful reforms or compromise with the West.
“There just doesn’t seem to be people over there in charge of the regime who are in any way open to any of those changes,” Rubio said. “And the things they talk about economically are cosmetic in nature. They’re not real, because that’s what they’ve gotten used to all these years, is just buying time and waiting us out.”
Rubio warned that strategy would no longer work under Trump.
“They’re not going to be able to wait us out or buy time,” he said. “We’re very serious, we’re very focused.”Rubio declined to rule out military action to bring about regime change, similar to what the administration did in Venezuela.
“The president always has the option to do whatever it takes to support and protect the national security of the United States,” he said.
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The Trump administration put the island nation back in the news on Wednesday — Cuban Independence Day — when the Justice Department indicted Raul Castro and five others on charges related to the shootdown of two Miami-based rescue planes in 1996, killing four people.
Rubio delivered a message to Cubans, in Spanish, marking the holiday — and ripping the island’s leadership for its treatment of its people.
Meanwhile, Trump sent the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships to the Caribbean Sea Wednesday as part of the pressure campaign on Cuba.
“Welcome to the Caribbean, Nimitz Carrier Strike Group!” US Southern Command posted on X.
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