David Remnick

Who is Diaz-Canel?

What's his role in the regime?

And what would ousting him even accomplish?

But uninspiring.

The description you've given me when we've talked on the phone and in your coming piece about Cuba is of a Cuba in desperate straits.

People are leaving and leaving and leaving.

The streets are filled with garbage.

That's right.

There's blackouts all the time.

The economy is in desperate straits.

events in Venezuela and elsewhere could not have been all that encouraging.

So continuity seems a kind of a grim way to put it.

I have to say, though, John Lee.

The war with Iran is not going particularly well.

It's chaotic.

The rationale for it has never really been explained coherently.

The entire Middle East is in a state of chaos.

How do Cubans perceive this situation where the American president, in the midst of all this, gets up and rather blithely starts talking about

regime change through the good agencies of the United States in Cuba.

You've been to Cuba a million times over your life.