Will President Trump act on his threat to take Cuba?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. President Trump says he plans on taking Cuba. We're already at war with Iran, and the conflict has spread to over a dozen other countries in the Gulf region. Cuba is at a very vulnerable moment. It had depended on Venezuela for fuel and supplies. But those shipments ended after the U.S. arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and and then the vice president, Elsie Rodriguez, became president, and she has complied with Trump. Cuba is bankrupt. The power grid is now being slowly repaired after it completely failed, and that wasn't the first time Cuba was recently in the dark. There's hardly any food or fuel, and an estimated one in five Cubans have left the country in the last few years.
Here to explain how we got to this point is John Lee Anderson.
What does President Trump plan regarding Cuba?
He recently returned from a reporting trip to Cuba. He writes about Cuba in the new issue of The New Yorker where he's a staff writer. His piece is titled Is Cuba Next? Trump's Campaign to Topple Foreign Adversaries Encounters a Battered but Defiant Regime. Anderson lived in Havana for several years in the 90s while he was researching his book about Che Guevara, who, along with Fidel Castro, led the revolution against the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Anderson is also the author of the 2025 book To Lose a War, The Fall and Rise of the Taliban. He's reported from conflict zones around the world. We recorded our interview yesterday. Let's start with what Trump said Monday of last week about what he might do in Cuba.
You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba.
Why is Cuba currently vulnerable?
When will the United States do it? I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba seriously. That's a big honor. Taking Cuba. Taking Cuba in some form, yeah. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth? We're a very weakened nation right now.
John Lee Anderson, welcome back to Fresh Air. What was your reaction to the statement that we just heard?
Thanks, Terry. Dismay and shock. I'm just at the tone that the man who is the president of the United States, used in referring to another country. And, of course, the dismay is not just at the type of degraded language used, but also the fact that what he just said was very counterproductive because anybody who knows the Cubans and Cuban history, this island nation just off our shores, knows that it has... to an unusual degree, a profound nationalist sentiment when it comes to its own sovereignty, its independence, and especially vis-a-vis the United States. And that goes way beyond the history of the Marxist revolution of the past 60 odd years. It goes back to the 19th century. So this kind of dismissive language is deeply humiliating, hurtful, and would get anyone's back up on the island.
And I gather that it has.
Why does Trump want to intervene in Cuba and possibly take it over? I mean, they're bankrupt. He often wants resources like fuel or rare minerals. What does Cuba have to offer that President Trump wants?
Well, it's a 700-mile-long Caribbean island with unexploited, undeveloped beachfront property. Let's put it that way. It's a real estate tycoon or entrepreneur's dream of dreams. There is simply no place like it in the hemisphere. Cuba has barely developed its tourism potential, quite apart from the fact that, yes, it's true, it does not have oil and has very little else that's exportable. It has massive tourist potential. there are some beach resorts, but they're on a scale, you know, minimal compared to what we have or what we've seen in the United States or for that matter elsewhere in the Caribbean. So for a real estate guy like Trump, you know, Cuba is just a bonanza waiting to happen. A friend of mine in Cuba sort of said, do you think if we
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:05
2
What does President Trump plan regarding Cuba?
1:05–1:57
3
Why is Cuba currently vulnerable?
1:57–4:52
4
What insights does Jon Lee Anderson provide about Cuba's conditions?
4:52–5:55
5
How did Trump's campaign affect Cuba's regime?
5:55–22:10
6
What resources does Cuba offer that may attract U.S. interest?
22:10–33:18
7
What are the dire conditions reported in Cuba?
33:18–44:53
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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