Trump Says He Wants to 'Get Cuba Done' Before Leaving Office and Would 'Certainly Consider' Military Force

Since the U.S. seized Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3 and cut off the oil that kept Havana running, Washington's Cuba policy has moved from sanctions toward open talk of force. On Thursday, Nov. 12, President Donald Trump took that talk a step further.

In a phone interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt of the Salem News Channel, Trump was asked whether he would order military force if that is what it takes to free Cuba before he leaves office. "I want to get Cuba done before I leave, yeah," he said.

Hewitt then asked whether Trump would be comfortable with "a little bit of military force, a week campaign." Trump answered: "I would be, I would certainly consider that, yes."

What Trump said

Trump called Cuba "essentially a failed … place, nation, whatever you want to call it." He said, "We're watching it very closely. It's doing very poorly."

He pointed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents are from Cuba. "He would love to do that," Trump said.

He also framed the idea around Cuban Americans. "I'd love to be able to do it for the people, for the Cubans that came and were treated really badly, and they came to America," Trump said. He added that he won the Cuban vote in Florida by 94%. That figure is Trump's own claim, and he offered no source for it in the interview.

Politico reported that this is the first time Trump has put a timeline on a possible operation. His term ends in January 2029.

How the pressure has built

The oil cutoff came after the Maduro operation. Trump then signed an executive order declaring Cuba an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the United States and threatened tariffs on any country that supplied the island with fuel. The result has been repeated nationwide blackouts, fuel and food shortages, and a humanitarian crisis.

In March, as Cuba's grid collapsed, Trump told reporters he expected to have "the honor of taking Cuba in some form." On Monday he said Cuba "will fall fairly soon" and that the U.S. would help it "on a humanitarian basis."

On May 20, Raúl Castro was indicted in the United States on murder charges. Washington has also sanctioned Cuba's state oil company, President Miguel Díaz-Canel and relatives of Castro.

The latest round came Nov. 5, when the State Department targeted 10 people and entities tied to the government, military and oil industry. It designated two China-based companies, China National Electronic Import and Export Co. and Beijing H&C Technologies, for allegedly exporting military equipment to Cuba in 2026.

"The United States will not tolerate subversive communist networks in our hemisphere," Rubio wrote on X that day.

A Chinese supply line into a hostile regime 90 miles from Florida is a legitimate national-security question. It is the strongest argument for the pressure campaign.

Cuba's response and the diplomatic track

Cuban officials call the blockade "collective punishment." Cuba's foreign minister said in June that talks between the two sides had produced "no progress."

In May, a person familiar with White House discussions told Politico that the mood had shifted. The person said the original bet was that sanctions, a blockade and military wins in Venezuela and Iran would scare Havana into a deal. "Now Iran has gone sideways, and the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought," the person said. "So now military action is on the table in a way that it wasn't before." The source was not named.

Rubio declined in June, while testifying before Congress, to say he would not invade Cuba.

At an earlier campaign rally in Fort Myers for Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, Trump offered a looser version. "We'll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran. We'll do a little stopover," he said, describing a warship stopping 50 yards off the coast before he sent Rubio in "to finish up the deal."

Iran and the political backdrop

The Iran war began Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes. Earlier Thursday, Trump said in Truth Social posts that he had told Vice President JD Vance to drop diplomatic negotiations with Tehran. "We don't need a deal with Iran," he wrote.

In the Hewitt interview, Trump said he would not hesitate to resume strikes on Iran if it attacked U.S. allies or ships.

The interview also covered the midterms. Trump called the results "lousy" and said, "I was very surprised. I'm not used to that." Democrats take power in January and have begun listing targets for investigations. The White House counsel sent Democratic members a warning this week that overly aggressive probes could be treated as criminal acts.

That sets up a collision. A president who is already fighting a war in the Persian Gulf, and who is about to face a hostile oversight apparatus, is publicly floating a second military operation.

No operation has been announced. Trump has not said what a "week campaign" would involve or what end state it would aim for, and he has not said whether he would seek approval from Congress.