Donald Trump’s other international obsession is Cuba, a country he defined this Thursday as “a beautiful territory” that “could have beautiful tourist resorts.”
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He expressed himself in the Oval Office, where he reiterated his threat, which he makes as if tossing a coin in the air. He maintained that the United States will “take care” of the island “as soon” as it finishes with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, without giving further details.
“I like to do one thing after another. We will deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and, as soon as that is resolved, we will make a small and brief stop in Cuba on the way back,” he stated. “We will take care of it,” he added, referring to that place in the Caribbean.
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“We have some very good plans for Cuba. I think you know that we have to get rid of the regime that was very harsh, very unpleasant. The difference is that now they no longer have money coming in. Before, they received a lot of money from Venezuela and not anymore. They received oil, but we are going to take care of you, we know that’s what people want from us,” he stressed.
“We just want it to be a well-managed country that can feed its people,” he indicated. “It is a failed nation without Venezuela,” he pointed out. In this way, he remarked that the intervention on January 3, when the US army kidnapped then-president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and brought them to New York where they await trial imprisoned for alleged drug trafficking, has caused Havana to run out of oil supplies and has placed the country on the verge of economic and social collapse.
He boasted that “what happened in Venezuela has been incredible” and all that flow is now “coming to us.” So Cuba “is starving, has no energy, no oil, no money, has nothing,” he insisted,
“It more or less collapsed,” he stressed, referring again to the situation created in the largest of the Antilles due to the global blockade decreed by his administration.
Sanctions mean the prohibition of financial and commercial transactions
“We will take care of them. We want to help them,” he repeated.
“Look, we have a lot of people who voted for Trump. 95% of Cubans (in Florida) voted for me,” he explained as an argument for his obsession.
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“They are incredible people, full of energy and entrepreneurial spirit. You know, some of the richest people in Miami are Cuban. They are extraordinary, and I am going to take very good care of them,” he said.
“I am going to allow them to return to their homeland. They want to be with their families again, you know. They have a lot of family there. They have been treated very badly by Cuba, but we are going to treat Cuba well, and we are going to allow our people to return and invest in Cuba if they wish,” he continued.
Trump’s statements came after the U.S. Treasury Department imposed new financial sanctions on Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel, several of his relatives, and Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín, son of former President Raúl Castro, who is considered a fugitive by U.S. justice for ordering the downing of two small planes in 1996 carrying U.S. citizens. He runs the risk of being woken up by Navy Seals any night.
The sanctions list also included the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Lis Cuesta Peraza, Díaz Canel’s wife, and Manuel Anido Cuesta, the president’s stepson, who resides in Madrid. Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis, Raúl Castro’s grandson and Alejandro Castro Espín’s son, was also sanctioned.
The White House also sanctioned the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), a network of neighborhood committees created to articulate popular support for the Castro revolution. The list is completed with the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, the La Victoria mining company, and the Amistur travel agency.
The sanctions, another form of pressure on the regime, mean the prohibition of financial and commercial transactions with the designated individuals and entities, whose assets under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked.
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