Marco Rubio just refused to provide a clear answer regarding the administration’s plans for Cuba.The state secretary appeared before Congress Wednesday for the second day in a row as part of the executive branch’s efforts to defend its $2.2 trillion budget request for 2027. But Rubio’s seemingly endless talking points abruptly ended when he was asked a yes or no question by Representative Jonathan Jackson about whether the White House will invade Cuba.“In closing, I’d like to ask you, will you invade Cuba?” asked Jackson.“Well, I have one second to answer. What do I do?” mused Rubio.“Will you invade Cuba?” pressed Jackson.“That’s not the only thing you said,” Rubio said, before committee Chairman Brian Mast took the reins of the exchange. Rubio never provided a deeper explanation on the president’s aims for Cuba, but attacking America’s Communist Caribbean neighbor is apparently not off the table. Donald Trump told reporters at the White House in March—while Cuba was struggling with an unprecedented economic crisis made worse by America’s Venezuelan oil blockade—that he expected to have the “honor” of “taking Cuba in some form.” “I do believe I’ll be … having the honor of taking Cuba. That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form,” Trump said at the time. “I mean, whether I free it, take it. Think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth.”Months later, in May, White House officials told Politico that what had originated as mild musings had since morphed into a genuine interest inside the Oval Office.“The mood has definitely changed,” the person familiar with the White House’s discussions said. “The initial idea on Cuba was that the leadership was weak and that the combination of stepped-up sanctions enforcement, really an oil blockade, and clear U.S. military wins in Venezuela and Iran would scare the Cubans into making a deal. Now Iran has gone sideways, and the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought. So now military action is on the table in a way that it wasn’t before.”The conversations took place around the same time that the Justice Department indicted Cuba’s former President Raúl Castro, sparking concerns that the Trump administration would extract and abduct him as it did former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
