The Cuban Communist Party held power for 67 years by waiting out every American president who came along.
Trump took out Maduro in 73 days.
Now Cuba's entire national power grid just went dark – and Trump stood in the Oval Office and told reporters he expects to have "the honor of taking Cuba."
Cuba's Lights Went Out While Trump Was Still Talking
On Monday, March 16, the Union Nacional Electrica de Cuba confirmed a complete shutdown of the national grid.
Not a rolling blackout.
Not a regional outage.
The whole island went dark.
This is what 70-plus days without an oil import looks like.
Since Trump's forces removed Nicolás Maduro from power on January 3, not a single oil tanker has docked in Cuba.
Venezuela supplied the lifeblood of the Cuban economy for decades – subsidized crude that kept the lights on, the hospitals running, and the regime in power.
https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/2032576115370340612?s=20
That pipeline is gone.
Cuba had been averaging up to 20-hour daily blackouts in some regions even before the full blockade kicked in.
Now they have nothing.
Hospitals have rationed services.
Gasoline sales are restricted.
Airlines have cut flights to the island, gutting the tourism revenue that kept the communist state barely solvent.
And on Monday, while his own citizens sat in the dark, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel posted on X acknowledging "the discontent our people feel because of the prolonged blackouts."
A communist dictator admitting on social media that his people are furious.
That is what desperation looks like.
The Cubans Screaming in the Dark Already Know Which Side They Are On
Something extraordinary is happening in Cuba right now.
Cubans are banging pots and pans in the streets at night – yelling one word.
Libertad.
Freedom.
Demonstrators stormed a provincial Communist Party office in Moron last weekend and vandalized it.
Fourteen people were arrested.
Diaz-Canel went on social media to warn that violence would "never be comprehensible, justified or admitted."
He did not say his government would fix the blackouts.
He did not announce an economic plan.
He threatened people for being angry.
This is the man Barack Obama handed a lifeline in 2014 – normalized relations, lifted travel restrictions, gave the Castro regime international legitimacy – and got nothing in return except a government that kept imprisoning dissidents and shipping support to Venezuela.
Obama called it diplomacy.
Trump calls it what it was.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration told Cuba's negotiators something that cut even deeper – Diaz-Canel himself must go.
Four people familiar with the discussions confirmed to the New York Times that U.S. officials have explicitly demanded his removal as a condition of any deal.
Diaz-Canel is not a revolutionary.
He is not a Castro.
He is a Soviet-trained electrical engineer from Villa Clara who was handed power because Raul Castro trusted him to keep the machine running.
He cannot keep the machine running.
The lights are off.
And the people who actually run Cuba – the Castro family and the military conglomerate that controls the economy – are cutting him loose to save themselves.
Trump Is Doing What 10 Presidents Couldn't
The U.S. has maintained an embargo on Cuba since 1962.
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/2033675133278196179?s=20
Sixty-four years.
Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton, Obama, and Trump's first term – none of them closed this.
In January 2026, Trump signed Executive Order 14380, declaring a national emergency and authorizing tariffs on any country that ships oil to the island.
That is not an embargo.
That is an oil blockade – the first effective one since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A Trump administration source put the strategy plainly: "Energy is the chokehold to kill the regime."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the son of Cuban immigrants, who has made destroying the Castro regime the cause of his professional life – is now negotiating directly with Raul Castro's grandson, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro.
Rubio is not talking to Diaz-Canel.
He is talking to the people who actually run Cuba.
He is telling them to hand over Diaz-Canel and make a deal – or watch the island collapse entirely.
The regime is now announcing that Cuban exiles will be allowed to invest and own businesses in Cuba.
That is not a sign of strength.
That is a government offering everything it swore it would never offer, because the lights went out and the food is running low and the people are in the streets screaming for freedom.
Trump did what 10 presidents could not.
He cut off the oxygen.
He already proved in Venezuela that he will follow through.
And now Diaz-Canel – the man who inherited a prison island and spent seven years keeping the lights off and the people quiet – is sitting across a negotiating table begging for a deal under exactly the terms he swore he would never accept.
Sixty-seven years of communism.
Ten American presidents who blinked.
One who didn't.
Sources:
- "Trump Vows to 'Take' Cuba as Island Reels From Oil Embargo," AFP/Reuters wire reports, March 16–17, 2026.
- "2026 Cuban Crisis," Wikipedia, March 17, 2026.
- "Cuba Libre: Rubio's Big Bet on Regime Change in Havana," Washington Monthly, March 16, 2026.
- "Cuba Confirms Talks With U.S. — But Warns an Agreement Will Take Time," CNBC, March 13, 2026.
- "Rubio: No End to Cuba Sanctions Without Regime Change," Florida Politics, January 28, 2026.
- "Cuba Faces 'Zero Hour' as Trump, Marco Rubio Put Squeeze on Regime," The Hill, February 2026.
- "Trump's Plot for Ultimate Betrayal in Cuba Exposed in Bombshell Leak," The Daily Beast, March 16, 2026.
