Just one day after the U.S. conducted a military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated a warning to Cuba, telling NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he thinks “they’re in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be and our policies are going to be right now in this regard,” Rubio said. “But I don’t think it’s any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime, who, by the way, are the ones that were propping up Maduro.”
Rubio’s latest remarks come after he and President Donald Trump signaled in a press conference Saturday that the administration could begin targeting Cuba’s government next, with the secretary of state issuing a stern warning to Cuban officials: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”
Trump on Saturday compared Cuba’s situation to that of Venezuela, telling reporters, “I think Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation right now, a very badly failing nation, and we want to help the people.”
The president added, “It’s very similar [to Venezuela] in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba, but we want to also help the people that were forced out of Cuba and are living in this country.”
Rubio added on Sunday that Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” the secretary of state told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.”
Rubio added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside to make sure there are no traitors.”
“Those are all Cubans,” the secretary of state said.
Trump on Saturday also spoke about his outlook on foreign policy in Latin America, referencing the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, a policy by which the U.S. sought to shape the Western Hemisphere and defend the Americas against influence from European powers.
Pointing to China, Iran and Russia’s influence on the oil industry in Venezuela, the president said, “All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries.”
He added, “All the way back, dated to the Monroe doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe doctrine.”
Over the weekend, Trump took jabs at other Latin American presidents, like Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico.
Trump, during the press conference Saturday, accused the Colombian leader of having “cocaine mills” and reiterated that he should “watch his ass.”
“He has cocaine mills. He has factories where he makes cocaine. And yeah, I think I stick by my first statement. He’s making cocaine. They’re sending it into the United States. So he does have to watch his ass,” the U.S. president said Saturday.
And in an interview Saturday morning with Fox News, Trump accused Sheinbaum of allowing drug cartels to operate in her country, saying “something is going to have to be done with Mexico.”
On Saturday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced the United States’ attacks on Venezuela and the capture of Maduro, calling them an act of “state terrorism.”
“#Cuba denounces and urgently demands the reaction of the international community against the criminal attack by the U.S. on #Venezuela. Our #ZonaDePaz [Zone of Peace] is being brutally assaulted. State terrorism against the brave Venezuelan people and against Our America,” he wrote in a post on X.
And an official statement from the Cuban government said it “strongly condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the military aggression carried out by the United States against Venezuela, while categorically reaffirming Cuba’s absolute support and solidarity with the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its government.”
“This cowardly U.S. aggression constitutes a criminal act and a violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. It represents a dangerous escalation of the sustained campaign of war waged for years by the United States against that sister nation,” the statement added. “All nations of the region must remain alert, as the threat hangs over all. In Cuba, our determination to struggle is firm and unwavering. The decision is one and only one: Homeland or Death.”
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants to the U.S., has long been a Cuba hawk and has for years pursued regime change in Cuba and Venezuela.
In 2019, during Trump’s first term, the president was vocally supportive of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who at one point declared himself president of Venezuela, a move that was recognized by the U.S. and dozens of other countries. Guaido was later targeted by Maduro with criminal charges.
During a 2019 pro-Guaido uprising, Rubio, then a senator from Florida, told NPR that he believed there was a legal justification for the U.S. to use military force in Venezuela.
“The U.S. has a right to use military force” when there is a threat to U.S. interests or national security, Rubio told the public radio station, and “by and large, that applies to Venezuela.”
He added that the United States’ targeting of Maduro in Venezuela could have an additional benefit of destabilizing Cuba.
“It’s certainly a byproduct of our engagement, but it most certainly is not the central rationale for it,” Rubio said at the time.
In that 2019 interview, he also referenced Cuba’s support for Maduro with security and espionage services, saying that toppling Maduro would affect the income Cuba’s government makes from those services.
“They make a billion dollars a year — over a billion dollars a year that they’re paid for their security and espionage services. So the loss of a billion dollars will absolutely have an impact on that regime and something that I would welcome. Anything that’s bad for a communist dictatorship is something I support,” Rubio said.
