Trump Threatens To Cut Off Communist Cuba One Week After Ousting Ally Nicolás Maduro
President Donald Trump sent a warning to Cuba early Sunday, suggesting he will cut off oil and money going to the communist dictatorship unless it comes to a “deal” with the United States.
Cuba, led by communist President Miguel Díaz-Canel, was strongly allied with deposed Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and provided some security to the former leader. Maduro was captured, removed from power and indicted Jan. 3. Díaz-Canel has since called Trump’s capture of Maduro a “criminal assault” and “state terrorism.”
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote in a Sunday morning Truth Social post.
“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE!” the president continued, referring to Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
“Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last weeks [sic] U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years,” Trump added. “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”
Cuba’s government said 32 of its citizens, all military or intelligence personnel, were killed during the successful Jan. 3 U.S. military operation which resulted in Maduro’s capture, Reuters reported ,Jan. 4. The communist dictatorship did not specify how many of the dead were actively guarding Maduro at the time.
Trump did not specify in his social media post what this deal would require or how the U.S. plans to ensure Cuba receives no more money and oil in the event the island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida refuses to make a deal.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the White House for further comment but has yet to receive a response.
Republican Florida Rep. Carlos Giménez, who fled his native Cuba as a child soon after it fell to communism in 1959, praised Trump’s warning on X.
“Thank you, President Trump, first Venezuela & next is Cuba. We will be forever grateful,” the Havana-born congressman wrote in a Sunday morning post. “Our hemisphere must be the hemisphere of liberty!”
Giménez’s colleague, Republican Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar, struck a similar tone in her own response to Trump’s post.
“President Trump is right,” the congresswoman, who was born in the U.S. to Cuban exile parents, wrote in her X post. “For decades, the Cuban dictatorship has survived by exporting repression, sending its intelligence and security forces to prop up dictators in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and beyond in exchange for oil and money.”
“Havana should look closely at what happened to Maduro. That is the fate awaiting dictators and their accomplices,” Salazar continued. “Tyranny has an expiration date. The clock is ticking.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Jan. 3 press conference, hours after announcing Maduro’s capture, that “all the guards that helped protect” him and Venezuela’s “whole spy agency, all that were full of Cubans.”
“I mean, they basically— it’s amazing — this poor island took over Venezuela in some cases. One of the biggest problems that Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba, that tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint,” Rubio added. “So yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least, a little bit.”
Díaz-Canel has served as President of Cuba since 2019 and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since 2021. He is the first leader of Cuba since 1959 to not be a member of the Castro family.
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