A week ago, Trump stated that \u201cCuba is ready to fall\u201d, noting that the island\u2019s economic crisis was worsening and that it would be difficult for Havana to \u201chold out\u201d without receiving heavily subsidised Venezuelan oil.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Sunday, the President reposted a message suggesting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio \u2013 a child of Cuban immigrants \u2013 could become the President of Cuba.<\/p>\n
Trump shared that post with the comment: \u201cSounds good to me!\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate message soon afterwards, Trump said that \u201cCuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided \u2018Security Services\u2019 for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of those Cubans are DEAD from last week\u2019s U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn\u2019t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuba\u2019s President Miguel Diaz-Canel rebuffed Trump\u2019s threatening language, saying the Caribbean island\u2019s residents were \u201cready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation. No one tells us what to do,\u201d Diaz-Canel wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez also weighed in to stress that Cuba is within its rights to import fuel from any willing exporter, \u201cwithout interference or subordination to the unilateral coercive measures of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Beginning of the end\u2019 <\/p>\n
Under a US trade embargo, Havana since 2000 has increasingly relied on Venezuelan oil provided as part of a deal struck with Maduro\u2019s predecessor, the firebrand leftist Hugo Chavez.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s provocative language on Cuba comes as the emboldened American leader has hinted he has other countries in his sights after capturing Maduro.<\/p>\n
Trump, who had openly sought last year\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize, has recently threatened Colombia, Mexico, Iran and Greenland.<\/p>\n
Some Republican US lawmakers on Sunday lauded Trump for his aggressive comments on Cuba, including Mario Diaz-Balart, a US congressman from Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are witnessing what I am convinced will be the beginning of the end of the regime in Havana,\u201d Diaz-Balart posted in Spanish on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tyranny in Cuba will not survive the second term of President Trump, and Cuba will finally be free after decades of misery, tragedy, and pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week ago, Trump stated that \u201cCuba is ready to fall\u201d, noting that the island\u2019s economic crisis was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9218,61585,28277,3468,2178,1872,43630,136217,42,185,702,4507,5812,300,43,2572,1324,6642,1361,61,6173,40,38,41,39,2179,136216,11226,3040,107149,1455,6730],"class_list":["post-228559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-before","tag-consequences","tag-cuba","tag-deal","tag-donald","tag-face","tag-flow","tag-havana","tag-headlines","tag-is","tag-it","tag-late","tag-make","tag-money","tag-news","tag-president","tag-stop","tag-tells","tag-that","tag-to","tag-too","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-unspecified","tag-urged","tag-us","tag-venezuelan","tag-warning","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}