After capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the US has set its sights on ousting one other Latin American leader.
By the top of 2026, the US government is hoping to ‘change leadership’ of Cuba, and is on the lookout for government insiders to ‘cut a deal’ to make it possible.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the administration’s plans, which might seek to oust Miguel Diaz-Canel, who has led Cuba since 2019.
The federal 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 occur.
Cuba has close ties to Venezuela, having received oil and funding from the Caracas government before Maduro was ousted.
The island frequently has blackouts, queues at supermarkets and petrol shortages because it undergoes its worst economic crisis in a long time.
A White House official told the WSJ: ‘Cuba’s rulers are incompetent Marxists who’ve destroyed their country, they usually have had a serious setback with the Maduro regime that they’re liable 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. Nobody dictates what we do.
‘Cuba doesn’t aggress; it’s aggressed upon by the US for 66 years, and it doesn’t threaten; it prepares, able to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.
‘Those that turn all the pieces right into a business, even human lives, don’t have any moral authority to point the finger at Cuba in any way, absolutely in any way’.
The US president also responded to a different account’s social media post predicting that his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who’s of Cuban descent, could be president of Cuba.
‘Sounds good to me!’ he wrote.
The US tried to purchase Cuba in each the 1840s and 1850s, to no avail, before Cuba gained independence in 1902.
America also previously tried to oust Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader within the Nineteen Sixties, through the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
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