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Assault rifles, ammunition and other supplies that Cuban authorities said were seized during a deadly encounter with Cuban exiles off the northern coast of Cuban on Feb. 25. Photo: CubaDebate\/Abel Padron Padilla<\/p>\nAssault rifles, ammunition and other supplies that Cuban authorities said were seized during a deadly encounter with Cuban exiles off the northern coast of Cuban on Feb. 25. Photo: CubaDebate\/Abel Padron Padilla<\/p>\n
By Kirk C. Nielsen, FloridaBulldog.org<\/p>\n
Disillusion with President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly set in among Cuban exiles in South Florida, nine months after U.S. special forces invaded Caracas, seizing Venezuela\u2019s autocratic president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and killing 32 Cuban soldiers providing security for them.<\/p>\n
The January 3rd operation, which stunned the closely allied authoritarian regimes in Caracas and Havana, triggered a new phase of serious fantasizing among Miami\u2019s Cuban exile population that a U.S. invasion of Cuba to remove the regime there could be imminent. Trump, who has been so wildly popular among Cuban exiles as to turn Miami-Dade County from blue to red and to inspire mile-long flag-waving MAGA car and pickup truck convoys, and the Hialeah city council to name a street after him, had stoked the fantasy early this year by suggesting he intended to order an invasion of the island.<\/p>\n
But for many exiles the war fever has morphed into disaffection and anger at Trump, cracking one of his most devoted political bases in South Florida for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Evidence of the fracturing has been abundant on South Florida\u2019s Spanish talk radio shows, whose hosts and listeners have skewed heavily pro-Trump for a decade. The shows, which reach tens of thousands of people over AM airwaves and internet streams via stations\u2019 apps, websites, and Facebook sites, serve as a kind of rarified focus group amid a Cuban exile media landscape flooded with a multitude of loquacious YouTubers and Facebook reelers. (More than one million Cubans and 250,000 Venezuelans live in South Florida. Precise data on how many plug into that fragmented landscape, and where, is unavailable.)<\/p>\n
Omar Moynelo, the jocular host of a noontime show on Salem Media-owned La Nueva Poderosa (\u201cThe New Powerful One\u201d 990 AM) has likened the situation to the distrust a guy feels when a girlfriend dumps him and then comes back to him months later.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she says, \u2018Now, yes, we\u2019re going to build something very beautiful.\u2019 But now you don\u2019t believe her because she left you and she took a long time,\u201d he said during his August 6 broadcast. \u201cHere this is happening to a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of them, an agitated elderly-sounding man, presumably a Cuban Republican, called in to Moynelo\u2019s program to vent about Trump and Rubio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDecember is going to catch us still in this nonsense! Nothing is going fall! They\u2019re not going to go in militarily, they\u2019re not going to go in to do anything, even less with the [midterm] elections,\u201d the caller yelled in Spanish. \u201cTwo marines die and we lose the House and Senate. They\u2019re not going to do anything. They don\u2019t have vision, they don\u2019t have anything planned, and this is a disaster. It\u2019s sad! It\u2019s embarrassing! But this is the nonsense we\u2019re in with these people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many months have passed since Trump posted his first threat of Cuba on January 11, eight days after the Caracas operation: \u201cTHERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA \u2013 ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT\u2019S TOO LATE.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response, the leadership in Havana immediately launched its own war of words on social media platforms and state-run outlets, insisting the Cuban government has always been open to dialogue but would fight any invasion to the death.<\/p>\n
Foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez posted (in Spanish) on X that Cubans on the island \u201cwill defend their nation against any imperialist aggression. For this land we are willing to give our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel declared on X and elsewhere, \u201cCuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation and no one dictates what we do. Cuba doesn\u2019t attack, but is attacked by the U.S. for 66 years, and doesn\u2019t threaten, [but] prepares, willing to defend the Fatherland (Patria) to the last drop of blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz followed suit with an X post claiming the U.S. has always been bothered by \u201cour profound conviction to be an eternal Baragua,\u201d a town in central Cuba where on March 15, 1878 Cuban general and independence fighter Antonio Maceo rejected a peace deal with Spanish generals because it didn\u2019t address independence for Cuba or the abolition of slavery. Historians credit Maceo with saying: \u201cWhoever attempts to seize Cuba will only reap the dust of its blood-soaked soil, if they do not perish in the struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
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America Radio hosts Miguel Cossio, left, and Andres Reynaldo, flank Miami-Dade Tax Collector Daniel Fernandez when he appeared on their show to talk about his office in February.<\/p>\n
THE EXILE AIRWAVES<\/p>\n
On the exile airwaves, commentators were bullish about an invasion and ridiculed the Havana regime\u2019s bellicose rhetoric. \u201cBlood will have to flow\u201d was a popular refrain from callers, while others were certain that if U.S. troops landed, Cuban civilians and soldiers would run to hug them.<\/p>\n
On January 12, with excitement from the Caracas operation still swirling, the cohosts of an afternoon show, La Resistencia, on locally owned America Radio (1260 AM), Andres Reynaldo and Miguel Cossio, envisaged a similar assault in Cuba.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cuban Maduro is in reality Raul Castro Ruz,\u201d Cossio reasoned, referring to the 95-year-old retired armed forces minister, former president, and brother of the revolution\u2019s late commander-in-chiefFidel Castro.<\/p>\n
They also imagined that Cuba\u2019s current armed forces chief, Alvaro Lopez Miera, and interior minister, Lazaro Alvarez Casas, might well be thinking about how to flee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if they might have a very concrete plan in which when they learn the first [U.S.] planes have taken off, they can go leave in theirs,\u201d Reynaldo wondered.<\/p>\n
On a February 10 show, with war fever still high on the airwaves, Reynaldo suggested that Cubans need \u201ca military Christianity\u201d to overthrow the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, you want a Crusade,\u201d Cossio joshed back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019d been reading Facebook posts from the island by a Catholic priest, Alberto Reyes, one of which had called for \u2014 not war \u2014 but speaking out for a \u201cfree, democratic, plural\u201d Cuba with \u201cliberty, justice, and truth.\u201d Father Reyes paraphrased a line from the Book of Luke: \u201cStand up, raise your head, your liberation is near.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On-air analyses sometimes drifted into reveries that Father Reyes\u2019s words could arouse antigovernment protests on the scale of the July 11, 2021 island-wide street demonstrations, which police and security forces quickly quelled, imprisoning hundreds. Only now, Trump would send in U.S. armed forces to protect the protesters and topple the government.<\/p>\n
But on February 18 Axios broke news that Secretary of State Rubio had secretly opened a dialogue with Raul Rodriquez Castro (aka Raulito and El Cangrejo), a Cuban army colonel who runs security for his grandpa, the 95-year-old Raul Castro. The elder Raul\u00a0 wields a murky degree of power \u2014 nobody seems to know for sure \u2014 owing to his history as head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008, when his ailing older brother Fidel (who died in 2016) and the National Assembly of the People\u2019s Power awarded him the presidency, which he handed to Diaz-Canel in 2018. The elder Raul retired from his post as first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in 2021.<\/p>\n
News of dialogo \u2013 tantamount to treason for many exiles \u2013 was the first slap in the face from the Trump-Rubio approach to Cuba: threatening war one week and promoting talks the next. Some hosts and callers were forgiving since that approach also piled new sanctions on top of decades-old ones and blockaded oil and natural gas from an island already destitute of gasoline and electrical power. Hard to ignore, though, was that under exceptions to the U.S. trade embargo tens of millions of dollars of food and agricultural products, medical equipment, batteries, housewares, automobiles (gasoline and electric), and other goods\u00a0were legally flowing each month into Cuba, mostly from Miami, possibly helping the regime.<\/p>\n
FEBRUARY SURPRISE(S)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, ten Cuban exiles in South Florida couldn\u2019t wait for the president to order an attack, such was their feverishness. On February 25 the men cruised from the Florida Keys to the northern coast of Cuba, in two motorboats<\/a>, according to inside accounts<\/a>. Ten members of an obscure group calling themselves Auto Defensa del Pueblo (The People\u2019s Self Defense) were aboard just one 24-foot motorboat \u2014 the other had broken down \u2014 when they opened fire on a Cuban patrol boat that intercepted them.<\/p>\n The border guards killed four of the exiles, captured six others (one died later from his wounds), and collected a boatload of high-caliber rifles, telescopic sights, shotguns, handguns, ballistic vests, camouflage uniforms and backpacks with Auto Defensa patches, boots, helmets, an electric generator, a satellite communications unit, walkie-talkies, bags of shotgun shells, and two large white plastic coolers filled with thousands of bullets. Cuban police had already arrested an eleventh Auto Defensa member who they said confessed to a plan to meet the others inland and proceed to try to spark a rebellion.<\/p>\n The war fever even affected one exile leader who normally promotes peaceful engagement.<\/p>\n \u201cThey went to free their country,\u201d Ramon Saul Sanchez, septuagenarian head of the exile group Movimiento Democracia (Democracy Movement), said by phone to the host of a morning call-in show on La Nueva Poderosa.\u00a0\u201cThey will always be an inspiration to those of us who continue fighting, and I\u2019m sure to the next generations who are coming,\u201d Sanchez intoned \u2014 paradoxically, because after parting ways with anti-Castro terrorist groups in the 1980s he founded Movimiento Democracia to advocate for non-violent democratic change in Cuba.<\/p>\n The host, Alberto Cutie, a former Catholic priest turned opinionated Episcopal minister, mocked the Cuban government\u2019s portrayal of the incursion as an attack on Cuba\u2019s sovereignty. \u201cIt was just a little fishing boat,\u201d Cutie assured listeners.<\/p>\n News of the deadly boat encounter drew more on-air calls from listeners clamoring for a U.S. invasion and indulging their belief that a protest, or even a successful ten-man incursion, could ignite an uprising across the island big enough to crack the authoritarian state. If that happened, many seemed to think, Trump would certainly send in troops.<\/p>\n But suddenly something unbelievable clouded visions of an imminent U.S. invasion of Cuba. Three days later, on February 28, Trump stunned even his most loyal fans with Operation Epic Fury, as U.S. warplanes launched daily bombings on Iran, killing hundreds of Iranians, from government leaders to children. On-air excitement about an invasion of Cuba dwindled, and talk shifted to the need for patience while Trump handled Iran.<\/p>\n KEEPING HOPE (FOR A BLOODBATH) ALIVE<\/p>\n Still, the president managed to keep reviving exiles\u2019 hopes for U.S. military fury in Cuba. At the White House on March 16 he told reporters he believed he would have \u201cthe honor of taking Cuba.\u201d Eleven days later, at the Faena hotel in Miami Beach for a conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund, he boasted about the success of the Venezuela operation and added, \u201cCuba\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n And once again hosts, analysts, and callers on the exile airwaves sounded thrilled.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two Miami area Republicans running for reelection to the U.S. House this fall, both Cuban-American, fueled invasion fantasies, despite the likelihood that military action would cause much more carnage in Cuba than in Caracas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked by a local Telemundo 51 television interviewer whether he supported a U.S. invasion of Cuba, Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-26) said in Spanish, \u201cI think that for the national security of the United States, not to say for the Cuban people, the elimination of that dictatorship is essential.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven if it involves civilian deaths?\u201d the interviewer, Gloria Ordaz, pressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne always has to try to avoid the death of civilians,\u201d Diaz-Balart replied.<\/p>\n Carlos Gimenez (FL-28) equated Cuba\u2019s socialist government to a cancer afflicting Cubans on the island, a popular cliche in exile punditry, and collateral damage was to be expected. \u201cYou know, sometimes the cure is hard on the patient, but at the end the cancer is gone. So that regime has to go,\u201d he said (in English) on CNN in May.<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s third Cuban-American representative, Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), also a pro-Trump Republican, dodged the issue, saying an invasion won\u2019t be necessary because the Havana regime will somehow fall on its own, but never outright opposing a U.S. attack or promoting peace.\u00a0<\/p>\n But soon dialogo was again in the air. On May 14 news broke that CIA director John Ratcliffe had just flown to Havana and met with Raulito Castro and Interior Minister Lazaro Alvarez Casas. They discussed economic stability, intelligence cooperation, security issues, and ending Cuba\u2019s status as a safe haven for U.S. adversaries.<\/p>\n Hosts, analysts, and callers tried to puzzle through whether the meeting represented more pressure on the regime or some kind of cahoots with it.<\/p>\n More pressure, they could soon conclude. Six days later, U.S. Justice Department<\/p>\n officials unsealed a new indictment of Raul Castro for authorizing two Cuban MiG pilots to destroy two Cessna planes flying toward Cuba in 1996, resulting in the deaths of four Brothers to the Rescue members. Pro-war exiles could again imagine another U.S. special forces raid like Operation Absolute Resolve in Caracas in January, but targeting Raul Castro in Havana.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to face trial they have to go get him,\u201d reasoned a man who called into Ninoska Perez-Castellon\u2019s afternoon show on La Nueva Poderosa to seek clarity.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly,\u201d Perez-Castellon replied.<\/p>\n \u201cThen it\u2019s the same as Maduro,\u201d the caller concluded.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can do many things,\u201d the host cautioned. \u201cMaybe they do it another way. I don\u2019t have the interiorities of how they\u2019re going to do it. The road that an indictment opens is that they can go get him when they want.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of getting Raul Castro, though, Secretary of State Rubio only heralded more sanctions, aimed at stifling government-run businesses and punishing high-level members of the regime, including President Diaz-Canel and Raul Sr.\u2019s son, Alejandro Castro Espin.<\/p>\n SUMMERTIME MADNESS, AS IN ANGER<\/p>\n In June, when Diaz-Canel announced dozens of new laws to privatize some state-run sectors of the island\u2019s economy \u2014 one apparent goal of Rubio\u2019s \u2014 the Trump administration hit the regime with more sanctions.<\/p>\n Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kept visions of possible U.S. military action in Cuba in the news, and thus on the airwaves, with a June 10 trip to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo to train with soldiers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be unwise for the government of Cuba to try to procure or get access to the types of weapons that could reach this base or the American homeland,\u201d Hegseth said, dressed in a green T-shirt and black shorts for workouts with troops. \u201cThey would be inviting the kind of confrontation not only do they not want, but they could not stand.\u201d<\/p>\n In a June 19 X post, Rep. Gimenez sounded even more gung-ho than Hegseth: \u201cWe\u2019re not buying what the Castro regime is selling. The dictatorship must be destroyed & relegated to the ash heap of history!\u201d<\/p>\n But as the summer progressed, some pro-invasion exiles were no longer buying the warmongering of their elected leaders.\u00a0 Trump\u2019s months-long, on-and-off war against Iran had repeatedly dashed their dreams of U.S. missile strikes and boots on the ground in their former homeland 200 miles south Miami.\u00a0<\/p>\n What had been a hermetically sealed Spanish language media sphere of Trump loyalty since 2016 was now punctured. Many callers still professed adoration for the president. But one could hear an uptick in the number of callers swearing not to vote for Republicans again or simply not vote again. An upsurge in deportations of Cubans and Venezuelans lacking legal U.S. residency further inflamed the outrage toward Trump and Rubio, a West Miami native.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere is the freedom for the Venezuelans? Not there! There is none!\u201d complained a woman who called into Alberto Cutie\u2019s morning show in June, noting she\u2019d voted for Trump twice but now regrets it. \u201cWhat this man has done with immigration has been intolerable. Everything that this man has done, the division, the betrayal he\u2019s done to the Venezuelan people and that now he wants to do with Cuba, too. Having meetings with murderers. With those people one doesn\u2019t dialogue! With those people one takes action!\u201d<\/p>\n Worse for those wanting war, the first shipment of $100 million in humanitarian aid the administration had approved back in May started arriving in Cuba in late July.<\/p>\n Hosts tried to hold the line, in favor of providing Trump and Rubio slack on Cuba until the president finished up his off-and-on again war with Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want not only this aid that Marco Rubio sent, but we want an invasion with troops that Marco Rubio has to send to begin this process of recuperation,\u201d Moynelo maintained on his July 27 noontime show on La Nueva Poderosa. He had just read aloud a listener\u2019s comment on the station\u2019s Facebook page: ABAJO LA DICTADURA! (DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP!)<\/p>\n The next caller, an aggravated woman, corrected the host, telling him that in the U.S. the president, not the secretary of state, is responsible for ordering an invasion \u2014 and she was clearly impatient with the commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n \u201cTell Trump he has to get rid of communism in Cuba!\u201d she shouted. \u201cBut when is he going to? When Christopher Columbus comes back again?\u201d<\/p>\n Hosts spent long hours on the air conjuring scenarios in which Trump would actually send in troops, ridiculing the Havana government\u2019s efforts to find ways out of the island\u2019s economic and humanitarian crisis, and appealing for listeners to dig deep for patience and continue backing Republicans in the November midterms.<\/p>\n In August Cossio, the afternoon America Radio host, spoke favorably of new remarks by Secretary of State Rubio that \u201cpatience and persistence\u201d are key in foreign policy and that by the end of Trump\u2019s term Cuba would be on an \u201cirreversible glide path to a different future.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think that this is a strategy of pressure from all sides with different actors,\u201d Cossio surmised in an August broadcast. As if to add credence to the Trump-Rubio approach, Cossio added, \u201cYesterday the federal congressman Mario Diaz-Balart told us here that he would bet his house that by the end of the Trump administration we would see the change we want in Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n Talk of a greatly extended timeline \u2014 til the end of 2028 \u2014 was another slap in the face for war-hungry exiles. As Cossio acknowledged to listeners, \u201cIn some circles the persistence theme did not go down well.\u201d They would have to take succor in an abundance of talk about the ills of the Revolution, the island\u2019s food shortages and power outages, the U.S.-imposed fuel blockade, new rounds of sanctions, and other forms of pressure \u2014 such as a CIA task force created to find fissures within the Havana government among anti-American hardliners and pragmatists willing to consider Trump\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n A New York Times article publicizing the task force was the theme of Moynelo\u2019s August 6 show on La Nueva Poderosa, a Trump move that the host spun as yet another sign of hope for pro-invasion exiles that the president hadn\u2019t ditched them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe girlfriend took a long time,\u201d Moynelo said, following through with his metaphor. \u201cBut once again we are excited. (Nos ilusionamos.) We don\u2019t have anywhere else to turn. One has to be excited with Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n OCTOBER VOTER CRISIS<\/p>\n Ever more listeners, though, seemed resolved never to take Trump back.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sayings bombs, I\u2019m saying missiles are what they have to fire there,\u201d one of Moynelo\u2019s female listeners told him on September 4. \u201cBut they are taking too long. This is getting tiring.\u201d<\/p>\n On Alberto Cutie\u2019s September 8 morning show, a rattled male listener told him, \u201cThis Republican Party \u2014 I am Republican \u2014 doesn\u2019t represent me at all. You think I\u2019m going to cast a vote for this empty, torpid, stupid, mediocre reality that is happening in this country? I\u2019m not going to cast it for Democrats. But I\u2019ll sit out, calmly.\u201d<\/p>\n In mid-September the three hosts of La Nueva Poderosa\u2019s often cacophonous morning call-in show, Fuego Cruzado (Cross Fire), had little to say to a male caller whose lengthy rant summed up the rising anti-Trump sentiment in the president\u2019s Cuban exile base.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Republican. I voted for Trump three times, I voted for Marco Rubio, things I now regret because Cuba is there bleeding out!\u201d the caller shouted. It was \u201cimmoral\u201d for the administration to open Alligator Alcatraz, the now-closed ICE detention center in the Everglades, \u201cwhere there are crocodiles and snakes as if to say that Latin Americans are worthless!\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n The caller then denounced Trump and Rubio for sending humanitarian aid to Cuba without having removed Raul Castro first. \u201cThey should have dragged him out by the hair after having condemned him, and they don\u2019t do anything!\u201d he yelled.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThey are immoral, se\u00f1ores! I\u2019m not going to vote for anyone again if Cuba isn\u2019t free this year! Muchas gracias!\u201d<\/p>\n With the midterms looming, hosts and many callers kicked into get-out-the-vote gear, imploring listeners to cast aside their discontent with Trump and vote Republican, because letting Democrats win would be a fate worse than capitulation on a Cuba invasion. Some maintained that socialist infiltrators have taken over the Democratic Party, others that Democrats actually are communists, just like the regime in Havana.<\/p>\n But anger at Trump\u2019s immigration policy could interfere with those voter turnout arguments.<\/p>\n On his four-hour afternoon show on locally owned Actualidad Radio (1040 AM) October 7, longtime host Augustin Acosta railed at the president\u2019s unhinged anti-immigration policy. Acosta, who two years ago was still pushing Trump\u2019s and other Republican leaders\u2019 stolen 2020 election claims (including conspiracy theories involving rigged Dominion voting machines<\/a>), offered a five-minute critique as sensible as any serious Democrat\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone said, \u2018How great that we\u2019re going to clean out all those undesirables,\u2019\u201d Acosta recalled, describing the Miami exile community\u2019s reaction to Trump\u2019s campaign promises to deport Venezuelan, Mexican, and Central American gang members and all kinds of criminals. \u201cBut nobody suspected, because it wasn\u2019t announced, it wasn\u2019t ever said, that [ICE agents would target] working people, people in a process of family reunification, people in a political asylum process.\u201d<\/p>\n Acosta added that ICE agents had arrested 509 U.S. citizens and even deported some, then continued his critique for another minute \u2014 not fantasizing about war in Cuba, at least not that hour, just describing a violent reality here at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ramonsaulsanchez.png\")
Ramon Saul Sanchez<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/gimenezdiaz-balart.png\")
Miami Republican Congressmen Carlos Gimenez, left, and Mario DIaz-Balart<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/trumprubio.jpg\")
President Donald Trump with Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/300px-1024-768-px.jpg\")
Radio Host Alberto Cutie<\/p>\n
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