President Donald Trump declared that Cuba is “in its last moments of life” Saturday while speaking to a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Doral, Florida, golf club.
He transitioned to talking about the Caribbean island after discussing Venezuela, which the U.S. hit with military strikes, taking President Nicolas Maduro captive, in January.
“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” Trump said at the event, which the White House called the Shield of the Americas summit.
He characterized the Communist-run country as “very much at the end of the line,” stating that it has “no money,” “no oil,” “a bad philosophy” and a “bad regime.”
The president floated a “friendly takeover” of Cuba last month, and said Thursday at the White House that Cuba will be Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “next” job.
Trump said Saturday that Cuba is “negotiating” with Rubio, and that he “would think” that a deal “would be made very easily” between the two countries.
“Cuba’s in its last moments of life, as it was,” Trump said. “It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is.”
He then joked about Rubio’s busy schedule in the wake of the United States’ ongoing bombing of Iran.
“But our focus right now is on Iran,” Trump said. “And we’ll do that, I would say, what will you do, take about two days off, Marco? No, he won’t. Maybe an hour. He’ll take one hour off and then he’ll finish up a deal on Cuba. That’ll be an easy one.”
He added, “But it’ll be the, uh, entire region that we’re doing that.”