‘Cuba is at the end of the line’: Cuba in the crosshairs at Trump’s Shield of Americas Summit

“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba’s at the end of the line. They’re very much at the end of the line. They have no money, they have no oil,” Trump said.

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The Trump administration has been alluding to leadership change in Communist Cuba for several weeks, with Trump saying last week the island could see a “friendly takeover” of its regime soon. The administration has threatened to tariff Cuba’s trade partners and has blockaded the island from receiving oil imports, which has sparked a deepening energy crisis in the country. The Treasury Department, though, recently announced plans to allow new oil shipments into Cuba.

The United States’s ouster of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela – a former major supplier of oil to Cuba – tipped the scales for potential regime change in Cuba, which has long been a goal of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family fled the communist state for Florida. Trump said on Saturday that Cuba has “a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time,” and that he and Rubio have been in talks with the country.

“I would think a deal would be made very easily with Cuba, but for 50 years, I’ve been hearing – as a little boy, I’d be hearing about Cuba – you know, Cuba is a disaster,” Trump said. “But Cuba’s in its last moments of life as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is.”

Trump declared the U.S.’s current foreign policy focus is on its war with Iran, but said Rubio could “take one hour off” and “finish up a deal on Cuba.”

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Rubio voiced his support for a Cuban regime change publicly before Congress in late January.

“Regime change? Oh no, I think we would love to see the regime there change,” Rubio said. “That doesn’t mean we are going to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.”