Former deputy national security advisor K.T. McFarland said the Trump administration was in a good negotiating position with Cuba as the country would be starving “in about a week’s time,” as Trump ices out the country from Venezuelan resources.
In a Sunday Truth Social post, President Donald Trump claimed that “NO MORE OIL OR MONEY” would be flowing to Cuba from Venezuela after the U.S. captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
In response to the president’s post, McFarland said she did not believe the “top guy [in Cuba] will make a deal because they’re ideologues, they’re zealots, they’re going down with the ship.”
“The question will be will the next tier of leaders in Cuba want to make a deal because they’re not going to have any money in about a week’s time—they’re not going to be able to feed their people, they’re not going to have gasoline, they’re not going to have anything,” McFarland said in a Monday Fox Business appearance.
“So at what point do they cut a deal? I’m sure we’re already talking to them,” she continued.
McFarland briefly worked during the first Trump administration under Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn.
McFarland also commented on Trump’s thirst for oil as the Trump administration looks to forcefully take over more sovereign nations.
“There’s huge movement, and there’s oil, a lot of it is oil,” McFarland said. “Oil everywhere that Trump wants to control.”
The U.S. has for decades sought to overthrow the Cuban government, and the Trump administration has already set its sights on Cuba as a potential target following its operation in Venezuela.
At the administration press conference immediately following Maduro’s capture, Trump said his administration “wants to surround ourselves with good neighbors,” and called Cuba a “failing nation.”
At the same press conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.”
Rubio, a Cuban-American, has for years been a Cuba hawk as he has pushed for regime change in both Cuba and Venezuela.
“The thing that is so interesting about this is, for Marco Rubio, this is personal,” McFarland said, adding “Marco Rubio is the American dream, and the thought that as American Secretary of State, that he could somehow be participating in a change in Cuba would really be something that’s got to be a lifetime fulfillment of him and the entire Cuban-American community.”
In response to the Trump administration’s threats, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said his country was prepared to defend itself “to the last drop of blood.”
“Cuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation,” Díaz-Canel wrote in a post on X. “No one tells us what to do.”
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