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President Donald Trump declared this Wednesday, Cuba's Independence Day, that the United States is willing to help the Cuban people and their families, while describing the island as a nation that is crumbling without oil or a future under the current regime.
"Let's see. It's a nation that is failing, that is crumbling. They have no oil. But we are there to help. We are there to help families, to help the people," Trump stated in remarks shared by the official account Rapid Response 47.
The leader justified the humanitarian commitment in his relationship with the Cuban-American community, which supported him "at a level of 94 percent" among registered Republican voters according to the 2024 Cuba Survey conducted by the University of Florida International.
"Many of those Cuban-Americans have family there, so we have to —in humanitarian terms— be there to help," emphasized Trump.
The president concluded his presidential address with a promise that encapsulates the tone of the day: "We look forward with confidence to a new Golden Age for the island and its people."
The statements come on the 124th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic of Cuba and one day after Trump claimed that he could "fix" Cuba "regardless of whether the regime changes", describing the situation on the island bluntly: "They can't turn on the lights, they can't eat."
Meanwhile, Trump issued a formal presidential message for Independence Day in which he promised that "America will not rest until the people of Cuba once again have the freedom that their ancestors fought so valiantly to establish more than 100 years ago."
In that same message, he referred to the regime as a "kleptocracy that hoards the island's resources while the people suffer" and warned that the United States "will not tolerate a pariah state that hosts military, intelligence, and terrorist operations just ninety miles from American territory."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also made an unprecedented gesture this Wednesday: he released a video in Spanish—the first time he has done so since taking office—addressing the Cuban people, in which he offered $100 million in food and medicine.
Rubio specified that the distribution would be carried out exclusively through the Catholic Church or other independent charitable organizations, explicitly excluding GAESA, the military conglomerate that controls the Cuban economy.
“The real reason for the lack of electricity, fuel, and food is that those who control the country have plundered billions of dollars,” Rubio stated in his message to the Cuban people.
The event is part of a sustained escalation of pressure on Havana. Since January 2026, the Trump administration has imposed more than 240 new sanctions against the regime, including specific measures against GAESA and its CEO Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, with a deadline of June 5 for foreign companies to sever ties with the conglomerate.
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