President Donald Trump declared in Saturday remarks to a dozen Latin American and Caribbean heads of state that Cuba’s communist regime is “in its last moments of life.”
Trump addressed 12 leaders of Western Hemisphere nations — including Argentinian President Javier Milei and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele — at the first “Shield of the Americas” Summit in Doral, Fla. on Saturday morning. The president told his fellow heads of state that Cuba, which has been under communist rule since 1959, will soon have great “new life.” He suggested its present regime’s days are numbered, especially after the U.S.-led January capture and removal of its former key ally, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” Trump teased during his address. “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.”
“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. They have a bad philosophy, they have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time,” the U.S. president continued. “I mean, they used to get the money from Venezuela, they’d get the oil from Venezuela. But they don’t have any money from Venezuela. They don’t have any oil.”
“People can’t … they land in Cuba, they can’t get gasoline to fly out. They have to leave their planes behind,” he added.
Trump then said Cuba wants to negotiate and is in talks with him, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and “some others” — adding that the U.S.’s foreign policy focus “right now” is on the situation in Iran.
“And I would think a deal would be made very easily with Cuba,” Trump went on to say. “But for 50 years I’ve been hearing— as a little boy I’d be hearing about Cuba. Cuba’s a disaster.”
“He’ll [Rubio will] take one hour off and then he’ll finish up a deal on Cuba. That’ll be an easy one. But it’ll be the entire region that we’re doing,” Trump stated. “But four of you said, ‘Actually, could you do us a favor? Take care of Cuba?’”
“I’ll take care of it, okay?” Trump added, prompting applause from the crowd.
Later during his address, the president explained his administration has a “new doctrine” of foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere, a concept he previously referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine.”
“The situations in Venezuela and Cuba should make clear under our new doctrine, and it is a doctrine, we will not allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere,” Trump emphasized. “And that includes the Panama Canal.”
“And together we will protect our sovereignty, our security, and our cherished freedom and independence,” he concluded.
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