After capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the United States has set its sights on ousting another Latin American leader.
By the end of 2026, the US government is hoping to ‘change leadership’ of Cuba, and is looking for government insiders to ‘cut a deal’ to make it possible.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the administration’s plans, which would seek to oust Miguel Diaz-Canel, who has led Cuba since 2019.
The government is already meeting with Cuban exiles in Miami and Washington, in hopes of reaching a government official in Havana who could help make a change happen.
Cuba has close ties to Venezuela, having received oil and funding from the Caracas government before Maduro was ousted.
The island regularly has blackouts, queues at supermarkets and petrol shortages as it undergoes its worst economic crisis in decades.
A White House official told the WSJ: ‘Cuba’s rulers are incompetent Marxists who have destroyed their country, and they have had a major setback with the Maduro regime that they are responsible for propping up.’
Trump previously threatened Cuba shortly after the capture of Maduro, telling them to ‘make a deal’ with the US.
‘THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!’ the US president said.
‘I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.’
Hours later, Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, responded on X by saying ‘Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. No one dictates what we do.
‘Cuba does not aggress; it is aggressed upon by the United States for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.
‘Those who turn everything into a business, even human lives, have no moral authority to point the finger at Cuba in any way, absolutely in any way’.
The US president also responded to another account’s social media post predicting that his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, would be president of Cuba.
‘Sounds good to me!’ he wrote.
The US tried to buy Cuba in both the 1840s and 1850s, to no avail, before Cuba gained independence in 1902.
America also previously tried to oust Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader in the 1960s, through the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
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