Trump Administration Wants to Replace Cuba’s Government, But What Would Come Next?

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News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

High level talks between Cuba and the U.S. are ongoing as the Trump administration’s four-month oil blockade of the island nation continues. Trump has said he wants a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, but it’s unclear what the U.S. stands to gain or what kind of government could come to power if the current administration leaves. While the U.S. has had an embargo against Cuba since 1960, the recent blockade has raised the stakes and forced many of the country’s nearly 10 million people to go without power, water, food, health care and other necessities. We talk about how Cuba is dealing with the worst humanitarian crisis it has faced in decades and what the Trump Administration ultimately wants. Guests: Michael J. Bustamante, associate professor of history, University of Miami; director, Cuban Studies Program Jen Triplett, assistant professor of sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder; researcher with a focus on Latin America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. For decades, the United States has treated Cuba as a special case.
0:10.7	From the crackpot 1960s CIA schemes to kill Fidel Castro to the extremely generous immigration policy for Cuban arrivals on American shores to the opening
0:20.9	up of relations that occurred during the Obama administration, the U.S. has never known
0:26.2	quite how to approach the nominally communist country off the coast of Florida.
0:31.7	The second Trump administration, however, has taken some unprecedented economic steps to isolate
0:36.3	the island, and Donald Trump himself is talking
0:39.9	about Cuba in ways that no previous American president has or probably could even imagine.
0:45.7	Here to discuss what's happening in the country and what the U.S. government might actually want,
0:50.7	we're joined by two experts on Cuba and U.S. Cuba relations. We're joined by Michael
0:55.3	J. Bustamante, who's an associate professor of history and director of the Cuban Studies
0:59.9	program at the University of Miami. Welcome, Michael. Thanks for having me. And we've also got
1:05.4	Jen Triplett, who's assistant professor of sociology and a researcher with a focus on Latin
1:09.7	America at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome, Jen.
1:14.2	Happy to be here.
1:16.2	Michael Busamante. Why don't you bring us up to date just on kind of what's happened in 2025. We're going to go back further in time. You kind of have to here. But let's start with this, you know, kind of since the Trump
1:27.6	administration came into office. Sure. Well, the Trump administration came into office with
1:35.0	Cuba already in a deep crisis and not to get ahead of your question to go back further already.
1:41.3	But, you know, Cuba has had a very difficult run of it at the very
1:44.6	least since the pandemic, since the first Trump administration, in fact. And so when this
1:50.6	administration comes in, they sense in some way that there's an opportunity that the Cuban
1:58.1	government's got its back up against the wall. I think one of the
2:01.7	really striking things they did early on in 2025 Cuba was tighten immigration policy for
	...

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