President Donald Trump stated Friday morning on CNN that he believes Cuba is “going to fall pretty soon.”
In a phone interview with Dana Bash, Trump claimed, “Cuba is gonna fall too… They want to make a deal so badly.” He suggested that, following the collapse, he would assign Senator Marco Rubio to lead efforts there.
“They want to make a deal, and so I’m going to put Marco (Rubio) over there, and we’ll see how that works out,” Trump explained, noting that Iran remains the administration’s immediate focus. He added, “We’ve got plenty of time, but Cuba’s ready — after 50 years.”
Trump asserted that Cuba’s collapse is a personal triumph: “I’ve been watching it for 50 years, and it’s fallen right into my lap because of me; it’s fallen, but it’s nevertheless fallen right into the lap.”
The day prior, at the White House, Trump had indicated that the return of American Cubans to their home country was likely the administration’s next major goal after the conflict with Iran.
Referring to his Secretary of State, Trump said, “Your next one is going to be, we want to do that special Cuba.” He acknowledged a sequenced approach: “He’s waiting. But he says, ‘Let’s get this one finished first.’ We could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen. If you watch countries over the years, you do them all too fast, and bad things happen. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to this country.”
