Frances Robles

That's exactly right.

It didn't exactly work because the Cuban government saw it as a Trojan horse, and they put up a lot of obstacles to that opening.

So other than a few years of a lot of tourism,

The economic opening never really happened.

But when Trump comes along, he basically says, OK, well, that's enough of that.

You know, so he reverses just about everything that President Obama had done.

You know, and he puts back in travel restrictions, restrictions on sending money to Cuba, restrictions on doing business there.

And he takes things very much back to the traditional Republican, we're going to choke these people until they fold strategy.

So back to sticks, basically.

Back to sticks.

That was always going to be Trump's plan.

And what's interesting is, you know, the Trump administration ended, Biden took his place, and he didn't change that much, to be honest.

A lot of these measures stayed in place.

But then Trump won again.

And you get the sense that this administration decided, this is our shot.

that this is going to be the administration that succeeds where so many before them failed.

And what they've done has really brought the Cuban government to its worst crisis that it's suffered in its 67 years in existence.

Its future has never been more precarious.