Michael Crowley

Now, this actually goes straight to the Cuba question that we're talking about.

I know from my reporting that Rubio has made a very explicit connection between bringing down Maduro and bringing down the Cuban government.

The thinking is that Venezuela and Cuba became very close allies over the past few decades.

The Cubans provided Venezuelans with military training and intelligence, and the Venezuelans were shipping large amounts of oil

to Cuba.

Cuba doesn't have a lot of oil suppliers.

So Rubio's calculus was if you can get rid of Maduro and cut off those Cuban oil supplies to Havana, that is a huge blow that brings you a lot closer to bringing down the Cuban government.

That's right.

I think for Rubio, probably the most important thing about what's happening in Venezuela right now is that we have forced Venezuela to stop shipping oil to Cuba.

Right.

And to lose such a key nearby ally and an oil supplier in Venezuela is a major development and a really bad one for the Cubans.

On top of that, the Trump administration is pressuring other countries to not step in and come to the rescue of the Cubans.

And in late January, President Trump issued an executive order threatening tariffs against any country that supplied Cuba with oil.

So now we have already seen another major blow for the Cuban government, which is that the president of Mexico has said that she has suspended oil shipments to the island.

And Mexico had actually overtaken Venezuela recently as the island's top supplier.

So that's the second major supplier to the Cuban government that has stopped sending oil just this year.

You're absolutely right.

But I think what we're seeing is the reality today that American economic might, coupled with President Trump's willingness to use that economic power in ways that other presidents have not.

And then I think this long, slow dimming of the glamour of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro and the impact he had on people around Latin America, I think that it's probably a little more doable than it was, say, a generation ago.

It's not easy.