President Donald Trump has set his sights on the next country in line for his ever-growing regime-change tour.
As his war with Iran rages on, Trump told reporters Monday that he believes he will “have the honor of taking Cuba.”
“Whether I free it, take it—I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth?” the 79-year-old president said.
Trump, who campaigned on ending foreign wars but has since developed a taste for regime change, said his rich Florida friends of Cuban descent are longing to return to the island nation, which was transformed by a Communist revolution over seven decades ago.
“I was just with a fantastic person who is Cuban and made a fortune in sugar,” he said. “This family wants to go back to Cuba to visit it. They haven’t been back in like 50 years or something and they largely come from Cuba. We’ll see what happens. They were asking me about it.”
The billionaire president, who seems to see business opportunities wherever he eyes regime change, continued, “I think Cuba, in its own way, you know tourism and everything else, it’s a beautiful island. Great weather.”
Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced Friday that the country had begun talks with the U.S. “aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations.” On Monday, Cuba’s deputy prime minister said the country would open its doors to foreign investment.
Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Trump whether any U.S. action in Cuba would look more like his overnight extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or the ongoing war with Iran.
“Can’t tell you that,” Trump responded. “I can tell you that they’re talking to us. It’s a failed nation. They have no money. They have no oil. They have no nothing. They have nice land. They have nice landscape, you know.”
The “America First” president said, “I do believe I’ll be the honor of—having the honor of taking Cuba. It’s a big honor.”
While Trump spent much of last year modeling himself as the “President of Peace” in a desperate bid to secure himself the Nobel Peace Prize, he has since switched course, launching the attacks on Venezuela and Iran and threatening similar action against U.S. allies Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Greenland, the last of which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a fellow NATO member.
But Trump’s appetite for foreign adventures is splitting his MAGA base—and the White House.
A source close to the administration told Axios on Monday that the president had grown dangerously overconfident after last summer’s strikes in Iran and Maduro’s capture when he launched his war with Iran, which continues with no end in sight.
Some in his inner circle are already experiencing what one official called “buyer’s remorse,” while another Trump insider told the outlet, “He grossly overestimated his ability to topple the regime short of sending in ground troops.”
