Fresh Off Electoral Defeat on Iran War, Trump Floats New Military Front in Cuba

President Donald Trump said this week that he wants to “get Cuba done” before his term is over, casually saying that he is considering opening yet another military front in a country whose civilian population is already being killed and starved by his sweeping sanctions campaign.

When asked by conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday whether or not he would use military force in Cuba, Trump said he “would certainly consider” a military campaign on the small island nation.

“I want to get Cuba done before I leave, yeah,” said Trump.

“We have a very good, talented guy for Cuba named Marco,” Trump went on. “Because Marco’s parents are from — Marco Rubio, his parents are from Cuba, as you probably know and he would love to do that. So we’re watching it very closely. It’s doing very poorly, it’s essentially a failed place, nation, whatever you want to call it, it’s failed. And we’re watching it. I would like to be able to do it.”

The suggestion to open a new military front comes despite voters delivering Trump and the Republicans a historic loss in last week’s midterm elections, due in large part to his failed war on Iran.

Cuba is indeed “doing very poorly” due in large part to the U.S.’s decades-old sanctions regime. The U.S. has held an embargo prohibiting U.S. businesses and citizens from conducting trade with Cuba since the 1960s, which had already had severe deleterious effects on the country.

Trump’s severe escalation in the sanctions regime, including the fuel embargo, is currently killing even more people in Cuba. As of June, childhood cancer survival rates in the country had declined from 85 percent to 65 percent since Trump’s sanctions were imposed, with medicine supplies reaching critically low levels. Infant mortality also doubled in that time, to 9.9 per 1,000 births, compounding on the existing effects of U.S. sanctions; according to an analysis this April by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the U.S.’s sanctions regime caused 1,800 excess deaths of infants between 2017 and 2025.

“The Trump policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Cuba has killed a lot of babies — and, although we don’t yet have data for the last few months, it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current U.S. fuel blockade targeting Cuba,” said CEPR report coauthor Alexander Main at the time.

The U.S.’s fuel blockade, meanwhile, has led to numerous near-total or total blackouts across Cuba this year, leaving Cubans literally in the dark as they clamor for basic food and medicine supplies. Experts have said that the blockade is akin to an act of war.

The Trump administration has not shown any signs of letting up on Cuba. Just last week, Rubio and the Trump administration instituted yet another wave of sanctions targeting Cuba. Trump and Rubio have openly called for regime change. Two weeks ago, Rubio issued an open call on X for people to open a “discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA” if they seek change in Cuba, in concert with the CIA’s Cuba task force set up earlier this year.

In remarks on Monday, Trump said, on Cuba, that he “imagine[s] it will fall fairly soon.” The same day, Rubio criticized the Cuban “regime” and said that the U.S.’s goal is for Cubans to “wake up and realize that there is no future on the path they are on right now.”