We’re not even three months in 2026, already it’s shaping up to be President Donald Trump’s year of regime change. He successfully removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, he took the US to war with Iran late last month, and now he may be eying a new target: Cuba, which he told a reporter last week is “going to fall pretty soon.”
To learn more about what could happen — and why Trump is eying Cuba in the first place — Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with The Atlantic’s Vivian Salama, who wrote recently about the administration’s Cuba ambitions.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Do we know what the Trump administration plans to do in Cuba?
We don’t know. I don’t know if they know, to be honest with you. I think the end game is very apparent to them, which is that they want the post-Castro regime that’s now running Cuba to go away.
This is part of the president’s grander scheme to lock down American supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. He’s talked about this at great length in the last year, as have many within his administration.
It was in his national security strategy. It is at the root of so many of the policies that we’ve heard him talk about since he took office for a second time: annexing Greenland, taking over the Panama Canal, even making Canada the 51st state.
Does the president really believe that the post-Castro regime in Cuba poses a threat to American supremacy?
I think the president does believe that. I do think he has Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his shoulder, who has made that a lifelong mission of his, to see an end to [Cuba’s regime].
Obviously, Secretary Rubio is the grandson of Cuban exiles, and this is something that is deeply rooted not only in his heart, but in the hearts of so many folks from South Florida, where he comes from.
Remember, Cuba is located just 90 miles from Key West. That has been a thorn in the side, not just of this president, but of seven generations of presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike. In fact, when we talk about whether or not this is a partisan issue, it probably haunted no one more than [Democratic] President John F. Kennedy; the Bay of Pigs was a huge debacle for his administration.
So many presidents over the past 70 years have tried one way or another to bring about an end to the communist regime in Cuba, and President Trump is now on a high from his successful ousting of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and this ongoing effort to bring about an end to the Iranian regime.
Advisers are telling me that he feels like he’s on a roll. It’s working. And so Cuba is next on the list.
We are seeing in Iran the risks of destabilizing a country. Bombs are flying all over the region. Iran is a regional player, and that’s worth noting. But what are the risks that the US runs in destabilizing Cuba?
One of the primary risks of destabilizing Cuba is, of course, a refugee crisis. People could flee the country by boat, by any other kind of mode of transportation. They could try to flood the US or they could try to go elsewhere.
And the migrant crisis, as we know — as the president has reminded us over and over again — is already in a dire state. And so to add to that could really exacerbate law enforcement efforts that are taking place in Central America and in the United States. Certainly, [it could] exacerbate the strain on the southern border. And so that is something to be considered.
President Trump is talking like this is inevitable. He said, without being asked, “Cuba is going to fall pretty soon.” So the president seems like he’s saying, this is inevitable. What do you think?
It certainly feels like this could be inevitable. Advisers of his that I’ve spoken to tell me that the president feels like things are going well in terms of the US operations, but also in terms of their efforts to cut off all the lifelines to Cuba, beginning with Venezuela.
He believes that that is suffocating this regime to the point that either they will surrender, they will leave willingly because they have no other option, or the US could go in there and [take] them out and it would be a very easy, low-risk operation.
To one of your first questions: Why now? Because they believe the circumstances are ripe for regime change in Cuba. They see — between Venezuela, between the momentum that the US has had — that the time to strike is now.
Vivian, it seems like President Trump is playing a long-ish game here. What is the long-ish game he’s playing?
Ultimately, folks I speak to in the White House say that yes, they are concerned that the president’s focus on some of these overseas operations could ultimately come back to haunt Republicans who are on the ticket this November.
But at the end of the day, I think there is a sense, especially among those who are advocating for these military operations, that it’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. You get them done quickly as a one-two-three punch, and that way come summertime, the president can go out there when he’s on the trail, on the stump campaigning for some of these people on the ballot, to say, look at what Republicans have given you.
We’ve given you victory overseas. America’s safer now because we did this, and the memory of those military operations, the strain that they brought, will be behind them at that point, and they can focus on domestic issues. Whether or not that works out remains to be seen, but that is definitely the objective that they’re looking to achieve.
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