Trump wants to ‘get Cuba done’ before leaving role

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In a phone interview on Thursday with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mr Trump was asked whether he was considering “freeing Cuba” through a military intervention.

“I want to get Cuba done before I leave,” he said, adding the administration was “watching it very closely.”

He called the island “essentially a failed … place, nation, whatever you wanna call it.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to topple authorities in Cuba.

On Monday he said Cuba “will fall fairly soon” and that the US would help it “on a humanitarian basis.”

In March, he said he believed he would have “the honour of taking Cuba,” as the island’s power grid collapsed following the US siege cutting off all energy imports.

Mr Trump put Cuba under a de facto oil blockade in January, after the US abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and cut off Venezuelan oil to the island. The measure was an intensification of the six-decade illegal US blockade of the island.

He signed an executive order declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and threatened tariffs on any country supplying it with fuel. The blockade has caused repeated nationwide blackouts, fuel and food shortages and a humanitarian crisis.

Cuban officials have called it “collective punishment.”

The Cuban embassy in the US posted on X: “$8 billion in damages in one year. That’s the cost of the US blockade to Cuba between March 2025 and February 2026 alone, a record figure.”

It said Washington had added sanctions last week on Cuban oil tankers and shipping companies, deepening “an energy siege that already leaves hospitals without reliable power and families facing blackouts.”

“The blockade is not targeted at a government,” it added. “It is collective punishment that hits ordinary people every day.”

Washington has added sanctions on Cuba’s state oil company, President Miguel Diaz-Canel and relatives of former President Raul Castro, and announced a new round this month targeting 10 people and entities tied to the government, military and oil industry.

It has also issued an arrest warrant for Mr Castro.

In March, the head of US Southern Command told senators that US troops were not rehearsing for an invasion.

Cuban officials said the island was ready for any attack.