WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that the US may embark on a “friendly takeover of Cuba” — and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is having talks with Communist authorities on the island.
“The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble, as you know. They have no money. They have no anything right now, but they’re talking with us, and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to Texas.
“We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years. We’ve had a lot of years of dealing with Cuba,” he said.
“I’ve been hearing about Cuba since I’m a little boy, but they’re in big trouble, and we could very well [do] something good — I think, very positive for the people that were expelled, or worse, from Cuba that live here.”
Trump added: “You know, we have people living here that want to go back to Cuba, and they’re very happy with what’s going on.”
When another reporter asked about Cuba, Trump added: “Marco Rubio is dealing on it, and at a very high level. And you know, they have no money, they have no oil, they have no food. And it’s really right now a nation in deep trouble, and they want our help.”
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Rubio has been in talks with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro — the grandson of Cuba’s former president Raul Castro and grand-nephew of Fidel Castro — in the wake of the Jan. 3 US raid that captured Havana’s oil-rich Venezuelan ally Nicolas Maduro.
The secretary of state met with the younger Raul Castro, 41, on Wednesday during a Caribbean nation conference in St. Kitts, the Miami Herald reported.
Trump has tightened the screws on the already-fragile Cuban economy since Maduro’s ouster, including by signing an executive order on Jan. 29 threatening tariffs against countries — such as Mexico — that sell oil to Cuba.
The Treasury Department on Wednesday said it would allow the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, but only if it benefited the private sector, which may require internal reforms of Havana’s state-run economy.
