(The Hill) — President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested that Cuba should cut a deal with the United States after last weekend’s military actions in Venezuela.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” Trump wrote Saturday morning on the social media platform Truth Social. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
In recent days, Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s massive oil reserves have come into focus. A U.S. oil embargo on the South American country has also put further pressure on Cuba, which is heavily reliant on the reserves.
“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” Trump wrote Saturday. “In return, Cuba provided “Security Services” for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE”
On Friday, Trump hosted several oil company executives at the White House, as the U.S. takes control of Venezuela’s oil and begins to market it globally. At the huddle, he signaled he will soon decide which companies will get to go to Caracas.
Since the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro last weekend, GOP officials and lawmakers have signaled that Cuba’s communist regime could soon fall. In his remarks immediately after Maduro’s seizure, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuban leaders that they should be “concerned.”
“In some cases, one of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba,” Rubio said last week. “They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint. So, yeah, look, if I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.”
Fellow Florida Republicans have echoed this sentiment, hoping that democracy emerges on the island nation just 100 miles off the coast of the Sunshine State.
“I think they are in trouble. The people are fed up. It’s a very poor country now,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R) told The Hill. “Now that they don’t have the oil from Venezuela, it’s going to make it even more difficult,”
“I think you should say that we have an opportunity for democracy in Cuba also,” he continued.
But, since the ouster of Maduro in Venezuela, Cuban leaders have struck a defiant tone against U.S. involvement in Latin America.
“For Venezuela and of course also for Cuba, we are willing to give even our own blood, even our own lives, but at a very high price,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel reportedly said hours after Maduro’s capture last week.