Marco Rubio took the White House podium this Tuesday in place of press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave, and seized the opportunity during the press conference to deliver a strong message about Cuba: the regime is a "failed state" governed by "incompetent communists" and the situation "will be addressed."
Leavitt gave birth to her second child on April 17 and has been away from her duties since then. Rubio, who had already made a surprise appearance in the press room joking about taking on that role at the end of April, took the microphone today with full authority.
The Secretary of State outright rejected the Cuban regime's narrative about an alleged U.S. oil blockade: "There is no oil blockade against Cuba as such. Cuba used to receive free oil from Venezuela. They were given a lot of oil for free. They took about 60% of that oil and resold it for money. It didn’t even benefit the people."
Rubio went straight to the point in identifying the true culprit behind the island's energy crisis: "The only 'blockade' that has occurred is that the Venezuelans decided they are no longer going to give away free oil. And you can imagine that nowadays, with oil prices, no one is giving away oil, much less to a failed regime."
Regarding the regime's inability to resolve the crisis, the Secretary of State was blunt: "The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent communist. And that's what we have: incompetent communists running that country. They don't know how to fix it. They really don't know."
Rubio had already used that same phrase on March 27, when he rejected any agreement limited to economic reforms with Havana and dismissed reports of negotiations based on anonymous sources.
The official framed the Cuban situation as a national security issue: "We have, 90 miles from our shores, a failed state that is also a favorable territory for some of our adversaries. So it is an unacceptable situation, and we will address it, but not today."
The statements come at a time of intense pressure from Washington on Havana. On May 1, Trump signed a new executive order that expands sanctions against the regime in the energy, defense, mining, and finance sectors, with secondary sanctions on foreign banks that do business with sanctioned Cuban entities.
This Tuesday, Trump reiterated that he obtained "94% of the Cuban vote" and that he has "an obligation to do something for Cuba", once again mentioning the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
The regime, for its part, responds with confrontational rhetoric. Last Sunday, Díaz-Canel warned about "the imminence of a military aggression" from the United States, invoked the doctrine of the "War of the Entire People," and declared that "every Cuban man and woman has a rifle."
Rubio concluded his message about Cuba with a warning that left no room for ambiguity: "Their economic model does not work. It does not work. And the people in charge cannot fix it." Things, he said, are going to change.
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