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Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

“WORST CASE SCENARIO” Leaked in Secret Cuba Files—Here’s What They Hid

Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.54.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Read Peter Kornbluh's latest reporting: The CIA Goes to Cuba https://www.thenation.com/article/world/cia-cuba-trump-regime-change-sanctions-military-threats-havana/

Watch the Friday Free-For-All: When Even the Newsmax Guy Calls Out Your Cuba Lies https://usefulidiotspodcast.com

Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.

After starting two regime change wars in Venezuela and Iran, Donald Trump is now ramping up his campaign to overthrow the government of Cuba, and in the process impose serious misery on its people by tightening his blockade and deepening the country’s humanitarian crisis.

And much like in Venezuela and Iran, there are suddenly reports of an imminent threat from Cuba, the tiny, starving island off the coast of the United States: Members of the Trump administration have begun claiming that Cuba has hundreds of Russian and Iranian drones that they will use to attack Florida.

It seems to be the same exact playbook each time: claim an “imminent” threat, increase sanctions, take out the leader, and start a regime-change war.

And as if to prove to the world that this is indeed the game plan, the CIA just made an uncharacteristically overt trip to Cuba.

CIA

So to discuss the humanitarian crisis and potential regime-change war in Cuba, we’re speaking with Peter Kornbluh, Director of Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects for the National Security Archive, who has been unearthing classified documents showing the reality of US foreign policy in Cuba.

In his latest piece, The CIA Goes to Cuba, Kornbluh examines the CIA’s aggressive operation in Cuba, detailing how CIA Director John Ratcliffe gave a “do or die” ultimatum to the Cuban government, how Marco Rubio seeks to benefit from a false flag attack, and reveals documentation that proves US officials “don't believe Cuba is an imminent threat, or actively planning to attack American interests.”

It’s the latest in Trump’s “empire-building” scheme that now spans across the globe, all fueled by neocons like Marco Rubio, and would be a sizable “Cold War trophy” to boost Trump’s imperial ego. Watch and share Peter Kornbluh’s full analysis (ad-free version):

00:00 Intro

03:39 He just said they need to use "Jewish money" to oust politicians...

09:40 These MAGA people are getting destroyed by Trump's war on Iran

13:38 What's happening in Cuba?

16:47 Peter Kornbluh interview

19:18 Trump on Cuba

34:12 "Marco Rubio is wrong about everything"



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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Katie Halper.

0:07.9

I'm Mary Mate. Thank you so much for being here. Our website is Useful Libyates Podcast.com.

0:12.3

Go there to support the show, get bonus content. This week we look at Cuba. Trump increasingly

0:18.6

talking about taking over the country. Marco Rubio making all sorts of

0:22.6

threats, we'll be checking in on the state of the Trump administration's regime change campaign

0:27.3

against Cuba with Peter Cornblue of the National Security Archive. He has been involved

0:32.2

in Cuban affairs for many decades and has released a whole series of important documents

0:37.4

showing the depravity,

0:40.3

the cruelty of the U.S. regime change campaign in Cuba going back a very, very long time.

0:46.3

But first, you know, every week on the show, we talk about Israel, because Israel is committing genocide.

0:52.3

And this week, we got a reminder about Israel's role,

0:56.0

not only in terrorizing the people of West Asia, but also its role in undermining democracy

1:01.7

with the defeat of Congressmember Thomas Massey, a Republican in Kentucky, who had challenged

1:07.3

Israel. And for that, some very wealthy pros of old donors spent a lot of money helping Trump defeat him.

1:13.3

And on the topic of Israel, we want to check in with a tool that we recently found to help us sift through the

1:18.8

propaganda of corporate news and how it covers places like Israel.

1:22.3

And that's our sponsor, Ground News.

1:24.5

They built a program where you can search for a specific news story and it shows you

1:28.7

every outlet that's reported on the story, the bias of those outlets and let you compare headlines

1:34.7

to see who's actually being factual. So here's a story from recently about how Israeli airstrikes

1:40.7

in southern Lebanon killed at least 19 people in one day, including four women and three children.

1:47.8

And let's see how ground news compared how different outlets reported on it.

...

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