After 60+ Years of Authoritarian Oppression, Blaming Cuba’s Plight On Trump Is Loco – RedState

As geopolitical tensions percolate across the hemisphere, there has been growing outrage from select voices about the damage this administration is inflicting on the island nation of Cuba. It is a claim in need of a sitcom laugh track, as people reading this ridiculous contention do not know whether to chortle or throw their phone in the river.

Currently, we are working to rectify some of the disarray and dysfunction operating in our sector of the globe, with Marco Rubio affecting change like an HOA president with actual juice. He coached South American countries to get on board with addressing drug traffickers. We recently helped Mexico with intel on taking out a cartel leader. Of course, there was the stark action to remove Nicolas Maduro from squatting in the Venezuelan palace, and the fallout from that eviction notice is now leading to pressure being applied to Havana. 

Casualty Toll in Venezuela Shows What President Trump Meant When He Said ‘Very Violent’

All of the right people are upset. Communist sympathizers and their doltish sycophants in the press are expressing disdain over what Trump is doing to the people of Cuba. After Maduro was shipped to New York to join with other borough residents in suffering under the Mamdani era, Trump instituted a chokehold on illicit crude shipments from Venezuela. This directly impacted Cuba, which has relied on handouts and lax debt collectors from other communist nations for decades. 

The already destitute Caribbean paradiso has basically been ground to a halt as a result, and many in the press have scurried to catalogue the ill effects. 

The NY Times admits that the US military has imposed a naval blockade on Cuba.

This is an act of war. The Trump admin is illegally seizing any oil tanker that tries to provide fuel to Cuba.

This is a barbaric medieval siege aimed at starving millions of Cubans into submission. pic.twitter.com/dHQnYLdYVI

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 22, 2026

The fuel embargo is targeting the leadership directly, but notice that the focus is solely on the citizenry. There are allusions to the residents suffering after already being economically challenged, or some other such darkly romanticized plight. But no exploration will be made into what brought them to “already”. And of course, they love to hurl the accusation that Trump is starving these folks. Just bypass the fact that, as the petroleum spigot has been turned off, we are Instacarting over food supplies at the same time, along with other countries.

Make that, “more food supplies.” What these Soviet Bloc-heads need us to overlook is that since 2000, we have been shipping food and other supplies into Cuba. That took place with the passage of the Trade Sanctions  Reform & Export Enhancement Act, which allows specific goods and medical supplies, with the proviso that the supplies are paid for ahead of time. Cuba’s garbage credit rating and its history of defaulting mean the U.S. is now like a payroll advance outfit that has been burned enough to require you to sign over your direct deposit, and we’ll portion things out accordingly.

     SIDEBAR: Can we pass a law that any new legislation bearing an encyclopedic title, like the Trade Sanctions  Reform & Export Enhancement Act, is required to at least create a jaunty acronym? How about the “Managed Optional Joint Trade Intensification Operation policy, or – the MOJITO Act?

Even with ignoring these realities to maintain the vehement need to blame the U.S. for…basically every Cuban problem, invoking Trump as the cause becomes another laugh line. As someone who is a longtime resident of South Florida, I have at least a mezzanine seat to what has been going on in Fidel’s former fiefdom. Seeing these people who push away Dos Equis in favor of swallowing Das Kapital now wailing about what Trump is doing to Cuba, you become imbued with the high-potency denialism that is the main export from any communist enclave.

     A Conga Line of Commie Contempt

Ever since Fidel Castro rose to prominence on that spit of land 90 miles due South of Sloppy Joe’s, two things have been ever-present: Economic hardships, and blaming all of that on the U.S. This country is that distant cousin who has not gotten their act together for over two generations and blames their sloth on their relatives refusing to support them with stipends, all while never accomplishing so much as cutting them a Christmas card at Navidad.

For nearly 70 years, Cuba has been under the lockdown rule of one authoritarian government, and ever since then, they have struggled to keep the lights on, still cannot figure out how to properly soak the wealthy tourists, and the residents are still driving the same cars from the time Fidel was being outfitted with new outfits from Commandant Klein. It has been the fallback complaint that this is all due to the U.S. effectively erecting steel gates after the troubling neighbors moved in, with the economic embargo.

Of course, for this whine to take hold, you need to ignore basic facts. Just because America stopped vice imports like rum and cigars, and removed Playa Pilar from the Spring Break rotation, where are the other nations? Our fungible fenceline did not mean all other countries were forbidden from trade. The frozen elitists from other nations were still free to jet over to thaw out after New Year’s.

But these are the Communists we are talking about, the political faction that has an unblemished track record when it comes to doing to their economies what 1970s rock bands used to do to Holiday Inn suites. Cuba has been no different. How is it that since the 1960s, this island that has every advantage in becoming an economic force, has never managed to find its way?

Cuba has more than double the coastline of Florida, and some of its shoreline is lush enough to make Miami Beach resemble a sand lake in the Ozarks. Given that the place basically has no winter, the tourism should be a revolving door. Its position and climate mean the fertile land can deliver the goods to feed American habits with sugar, coffee, and tobacco. 

Due to the inability to improve infrastructure, there is a level of historical preservation, so Havana alone has the architecture and vistas to make Hollywood salivate. Add in gambling and relaxed legal enforcement, and that will also become a draw. Hell, just the mystique of Papa Hemingway’s literary output should have sportfishing being an industry thriving enough to pay the utility bills.

Instead, it has been half a century of constriction. When Fidel nationalized things in the ‘60s, it was not a subtle shift. He took over industries and confiscated thousands of private businesses, and his best and brightest fled to Florida in the original boatlift. The result has been a DMV level of renovations across the economy, and what followed was predictable malaise. 

Cuba has only survived all of this time through Communist welfare, via Russia, primarily. Moscow has long fed Castro his needed oil and agreed to overpay for basic goods with farm subsidies. China has been a source of credit for decades, a nation less interested in recouping its funds than in having a communist island serving as our doormat. Even so, Fidel displayed his allyship prowess by insulting his creditor, telling Barbara Walters once, “I believe that Mao destroyed with his feet what he did with his head for many years.”

It has been a remarkable commie constant that they promote socialized farming to elevate the people, and then promptly bugger their land management. Castro followed that revered Communist tradition of screwing up agrarian policy grandly. Cuban coffee has become more of a style to order than an actual crop. The nation’s coffee yield peaked just before Castro took over, and today stands at less than half that amount. Cuban cigars, once the revered standard for that product, have been eclipsed by those made in most Central American locales. 

And the real amazement is how he screwed el perro with sugar. That staple product had long been the commodity that fueled the economy, and today that industry is such a mess that it constantly produces a fraction of projected yields. With less than half of its mills even operating, Cuba today has to actually import that core product; now factor in that it is also the basis of rum production, and the problems are exacerbated.

These days, the once-revered products from the island are an echo of what they had been and have been reduced to novelty status. Even those foreigners permitted on the island buy Cohibas and Havana Club do so as a sign of access; a bragging point, with little interest in indulging. 

Flushing out Fidel’s leftovers is more overdue than the international loans that have turned dormant. Bring in a dose of some rapacious capitalism, and the fortunes of this island would flip in less than a five-year span. Then privatize the fields and get the crops back to capacity output, and the GDP will be the envy of the Caribbean. 

I say the hell with Canada. Rename the island place “Marco Cubio”, and make it the 51st state. The tax revenue would flow like a busted hydrant, and pissing off China and Russia will be a bonus.

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