President Trump said in a radio interview released Thursday that he wants to “get Cuba done” before his term ends, and he named Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the man for the job.
The remark came in a 42-minute conversation with conservative host Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt asked him directly: “If freeing Cuba requires military force, before you leave office, will you order that military force?”
Trump did not rule it out. “I wanna get Cuba done before I leave,” he said, according to the transcript published by Roll Call’s Factba.se. “And we have a very good, talented guy for Cuba named Marco.” The State Department posted the clip on X Thursday afternoon.
This builds on what the President said Monday in the White House briefing room, when he predicted Cuba’s communist government “will fall fairly soon.” This time he tied the goal to his own time in office.
Rubio and the Cuban families
Trump said Rubio, whose parents came from Cuba, “would love to do that.” He described the island as “essentially a failed, you know, place, nation, whatever you wanna call it,” and said, “We’re watching it very closely.”
He also tied the goal to the Cuban exiles who built new lives here. “I’d love to be able to do it for the people, for the Cubans that came and were treated really badly and they came to America,” he said.
Trump did not say what “done” would look like or describe any military plan.
No hesitation on Iran
Hewitt also pressed the President on Iran, listing the operations of his second term and asking whether he would hesitate to use force “to stop Iran from terrorizing our allies and our ships.”
“No. No hesitation,” Trump answered. He said the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran’s regime “is collapsing,” pointing to what he called 301% inflation and unpaid soldiers. “If something doesn’t work out, I would not hesitate,” he said.
When Hewitt urged him to return to full combat operations and destroy what is left of Iran’s industrial base and the underground site known as Pickaxe Mountain, Trump replied, “It could happen. It could happen.”
Asked what would happen if Iran killed a senior American official, he said, “They will not exist very long, any longer.”
The bottom line
For more than 60 years, Cuba’s rulers have jailed dissidents, silenced pastors and kept ordinary families in poverty 90 miles from Florida. Presidents of both parties have promised the Cuban people their freedom, and every president since Eisenhower has left office with the communist system still standing. Trump is the first in a long time to talk about finishing the job on his own watch, and he has put a Cuban-American secretary of state in charge of it.
I want to see this done the right way. A free Cuba would remove a hostile communist government from 90 miles off our coast and let exiles in Miami go home to visit without fear. The administration should keep building pressure on the regime, keep its allies informed, and come to the American people and to Congress before any use of force.
On Iran, the President gave the right answer. Tehran has threatened our ships, our bases and our officials, and the clearest way to protect Americans is to leave its leaders no doubt that another attack will be met with overwhelming force.