Trump Wants to ‘Get Cuba Done’ Before He Leaves Office and Would ‘Certainly Consider’ Military Force

President Trump said Thursday that he wants to “get Cuba done” before he leaves office and that he would “certainly consider” a short military campaign to bring down the island’s communist government.

“I want to get Cuba done before I leave,” Trump told conservative host Hugh Hewitt in a phone interview broadcast on the Salem News Channel, Mediaite reported.

Trump said the administration is “watching it very closely” and called Cuba “essentially a failed, you know, place, nation, whatever you want to call it.”

Hewitt then asked directly: “So, if it took a little bit of military force, a week campaign, you’d be okay with that?” Trump answered, “I’d be — I would certainly consider that, yes,” according to the transcript Mediaite published.

The president singled out Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents came from Cuba, as the man for the job. “We have a very good, talented guy for Cuba named Marco,” Trump said. “He would love to do that.”

Trump also tied the push to Cuban-American voters in Florida, saying he wanted to act “for the people, for the Cubans that came and were treated really badly, and they came to America.”

He credited U.S. pressure for the island’s troubles. “It’s because of my intervention,” Trump said. “We cut off all oil, all money, … everything coming in from Venezuela, which was the sole source.”

Pressure Has Been Building All Year

The cutoff followed the U.S. military operation that captured and removed Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, which ended the subsidized Venezuelan oil Havana depended on and plunged Cuba into a severe economic and energy crisis, The Epoch Times reported.

Trump has hinted at intervention before. Earlier this week he said Cuba “will fall fairly soon,” and in March he said, “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it,” The Hill reported.

The administration announced another round of sanctions earlier this month targeting 10 people and entities tied to Cuba’s government, military and oil industry. Rubio told Fox News last month that Cuba has “already fallen” and is a “failed state.”

In the same interview, Trump also warned Iran. He said he would not hesitate to order new strikes “if I saw things going the other way,” The Times of Israel reported, while claiming the U.S. is “doing very well” in the region right now.

The White House has not announced any military plans for Cuba, and Trump did not lay out a timeline beyond the end of his term in January 2029.

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