Trump: Invading Cuba will be a 'Great Honor'

"I think I'll have the honor of conquering Cuba," said 47, hunched over the Resolute Desk. "That wouldn't be bad. It would be a great honor. I can liberate it or conquer it, I think I can do what I want with it," he said.

Last week, Trump hinted at an invasion of Cuba. Marco Rubio said the broken-down and impoverished communist island nation is a threat to the national security of the United States.

Beyond that specious claim, the Trump administration wants to kidnap the former leader of Cuba, Raúl Castro, brother of the late Fidel, and charge him with murder. Cuba shot down two aircraft operated by an admitted CIA operative and anti-Castro Cubans, known as the Miami Mafia.

The United States imposed a harsh embargo on Cuba after the revolutionaries deposed the brutal military dictator Fulgencio Batista and the Mafia in 1959. Castro and the communists nationalized US industry and foreign-owned land holdings. This was a serious offense for a United States steeped in Cold War anti-communist propaganda.

The CIA spent decades trying to murder Fidel Castro and destroy the revolutionary communist government in Havana. The CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion failed, and so did the efforts to murder Castro and key revolutionaries, with the exception of the Argentine Marxist Che Guevara, tracked down and killed in Bolivia with the CIA playing a supporting role.

Marco Rubio, born to undocumented Cuban immigrants, emerged from Florida's Cuban exile community. In the 1970s, the Miami Mafia and anti-Castro groups were responsible for a wave of bombings in America, with authorities linking them to approximately 113 bombings, resulting in around a dozen fatalities. The FBI labeled Miami as the "terrorist capital of the United States" due to the high incidence of violence associated with Cuban exile groups.

The CIA recruited, financed, trained, and coordinated anti-Castro groups in Miami. Through Operation Mongoose, the CIA and Defense Department backed efforts to destabilize and ultimately overthrow Castro's government, including covert aid for select exile organizations and plans for sabotage and infiltration. In the early 1960s, the CIA budget for operations against Cuba was $13 million (equivalent to $142 million in 2026).

The exiled Cuban elite are already planning for a post-communist future. The Cuban American National Foundation, a lobbying organization modeled after AIPAC, calls for "a free-market democracy grounded in private initiative." In other words, a return to the neoliberal status quo.

Before the 1959 Cuban Revolution, foreign investment in Cuba was primarily dominated by American companies. Approximately 30 US companies controlled a substantial portion of foreign investment, including utilities (the Cuban Electric Company, Companía Cubana de Electricidad), agriculture (United Fruit Company and various sugar and tobacco corporations), and manufacturing (primarily textiles and clothing).

Cuba, under the dictatorship of Batista, was described by Arthur Miller "as hopelessly corrupt, a Mafia playground, a bordello for Americans and other foreigners." The critic Susan Sontag, in an article in Ramparts, described Cuba as "a country known mainly for dance, music, prostitutes, cigars, abortions, resort life, and pornographic movies." Gambling, illicit drugs, and the sex trade were profitable and engendered widespread corruption.