Mike Baker

He posted, quote, Venezuela doesn't need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years.

Venezuela now has the U.S., the most powerful military in the world, to protect them, and protect them we will, end quote.

Now, that framing matters, because Cuba was already wobbling long before Maduro fell.

I've talked before about how blackouts and fuel shortages and empty supermarket shelves pushed daily life on the island to the brink.

Cuba right now is enduring its worst economic crisis in decades, and Venezuelan oil wasn't fixing those problems, it was masking them.

Now that cover is gone.

Diaz-Canel blames Washington's pressure campaign for the island's collapse, claiming recent U.S.

sanctions cost Cuba more than $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025.

Still, the Cuban president insists his country's political model is a sovereign choice and denounced what he called, quote, "...draconian measures imposed by Washington."

But Trump has been blunt about where his trajectory will lead Havana, posting, quote, it's going down, it's going down for the count, end quote.

Diaz-Canel acknowledged Havana is not currently in talks with Washington.

Any reset, he said, would require an end to what he described as, quote, hostility, threats and economic coercion.

In other words, Cuba wants relief first without offering much, if anything, in return.

As we've been tracking, before the U.S.

operation to oust Maduro took place, Cuba had been receiving roughly 35,000 barrels of oil per day from Venezuela.

And without it, Havana is left facing shortages that it cannot easily replace.

All right, coming up in today's Back of the Brief, we take a closer look at claims of a so-called sonic weapon allegedly used by U.S.

forces during the Maduro operation.

So, is Washington deploying secret technology, or could the explanation be far more mundane?

We'll have those details.