Patriot Brief

• Trump threatened to cut off all oil and money to Cuba unless it reaches a deal with the U.S.

• Cuba’s regime is accused of propping up Venezuela’s dictatorship in exchange for oil and cash.

• U.S. officials and Cuban-American lawmakers praised the warning as long-overdue pressure.

For decades, Cuba has survived not by reforming, liberalizing, or producing anything of value, but by renting out repression. President Donald Trump’s warning to Havana is blunt for a reason: the old arrangement is over, and there’s no polite way left to say it.

Trump’s message to the Cuban regime was not subtle. No more oil. No more money. Zero. The communist government led by Miguel Díaz-Canel has spent years acting as a regional security contractor for authoritarian regimes, most notably Venezuela. In exchange for energy and cash, Cuba supplied intelligence officers, security forces, and political muscle to keep dictators in power. That model collapsed the moment Nicolás Maduro was captured and removed.

Díaz-Canel’s outrage over Maduro’s arrest is revealing. He called it “state terrorism,” not because international law was violated, but because Cuba lost a client. When Trump pointed out that Cuba lived off Venezuelan oil while providing “security services” to Maduro and his predecessor, he wasn’t speculating. He was stating the arrangement plainly, without the euphemisms diplomats usually hide behind.

Cuba now claims dozens of its military or intelligence personnel were killed during the U.S. operation that led to Maduro’s capture. The regime hasn’t clarified how many were actively guarding him, which is convenient. But the admission itself confirms what critics have said for years: Cuban operatives were embedded deep inside Venezuela’s security apparatus. This wasn’t solidarity. It was control.

What’s different now is leverage. Venezuela no longer needs Cuban protection, Trump made that clear. The United States has stepped in, and with that shift comes consequences for Havana. The era of subsidizing repression from 90 miles off Florida’s coast is ending, whether Cuba likes it or not.

Cuban-American lawmakers like Carlos Giménez and María Elvira Salazar understand this better than most. They’ve lived the reality of a regime that survives by exporting tyranny and importing resources. Their support isn’t ideological theater. It’s personal.

Trump didn’t spell out what a “deal” would look like, and he didn’t need to. The message was strategic, not procedural. Change course, or lose the lifelines that kept the dictatorship afloat. That’s not recklessness. It’s clarity.

Cuba’s leadership can denounce, posture, and rage all it wants. The math has changed. The protection racket has collapsed. And for the first time in a long time, Havana is being forced to confront a future without someone else paying the bill.

From Daily Caller:

President Donald Trump sent a warning to Cuba early Sunday, suggesting he will cut off oil and money going to the communist dictatorship unless it comes to a “deal” with the United States.

Cuba, led by communist President Miguel Díaz-Canel, was strongly allied with deposed Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and provided some security to the former leader. Maduro was captured, removed from power and indicted Jan. 3. Díaz-Canel has since called Trump’s capture of Maduro a “criminal assault” and “state terrorism.”

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump wrote in a Sunday morning Truth Social post.

“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE!” the president continued, referring to Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

“Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last weeks [sic] U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years,” Trump added. “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”

“…THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”- President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/bHEIysJ7q1

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 11, 2026

Cuba’s government said 32 of its citizens, all military or intelligence personnel, were killed during the successful Jan. 3 U.S. military operation which resulted in Maduro’s capture, Reuters reported ,Jan. 4. The communist dictatorship did not specify how many of the dead were actively guarding Maduro at the time.

Trump did not specify in his social media post what this deal would require or how the U.S. plans to ensure Cuba receives no more money and oil in the event the island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida refuses to make a deal.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the White House for further comment but has yet to receive a response.

Republican Florida Rep. Carlos Giménez, who fled his native Cuba as a child soon after it fell to communism in 1959, praised Trump’s warning on X.

“Thank you, President Trump, first Venezuela & next is Cuba. We will be forever grateful,” the Havana-born congressman wrote in a Sunday morning post. “Our hemisphere must be the hemisphere of liberty!”

Giménez’s colleague, Republican Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar, struck a similar tone in her own response to Trump’s post.

“President Trump is right,” the congresswoman, who was born in the U.S. to Cuban exile parents, wrote in her X post. “For decades, the Cuban dictatorship has survived by exporting repression, sending its intelligence and security forces to prop up dictators in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and beyond in exchange for oil and money.”

“Havana should look closely at what happened to Maduro. That is the fate awaiting dictators and their accomplices,” Salazar continued. “Tyranny has an expiration date. The clock is ticking.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Jan. 3 press conference, hours after announcing Maduro’s capture, that “all the guards that helped protect” him and Venezuela’s “whole spy agency, all that were full of Cubans.”

“I mean, they basically— it’s amazing — this poor island took over Venezuela in some cases. One of the biggest problems that Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba, that tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint,” Rubio added. “So yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least, a little bit.”

Díaz-Canel has served as President of Cuba since 2019 and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since 2021. He is the first leader of Cuba since 1959 to not be a member of the Castro family.

Source

Photo Credit: PABLO PORCIUNCULA and SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images