Trump Bored With Iran, Wants To Grab Cuba By The Gata

Another day, another war crime.

1930s postcard of Cuba (eBay)

Of all the Donald Trump metaphors lately, the only one that sticks is the later days of Michael Jackson. Financially strapped, isolated from everyone but brown-nosing toadies and medicated to the gills, he spent his waning time on earth self-defeatingly soothing his addled brain with wild shopping sprees of millions’ worth of dollars of tacky crap, commissioned paintings of himself, and embraced military-dictator dress and gilt trappings.

Anyway, now Trump wants to be the honor of Cuba. To free it, take it! He can do anything he wants with it, he thinks.

Settle down, pussgrab. And yes, Cuba is in a hurricane zone. If l’histoire de Donald Trump is any guide, what he wants to do with it is wrap it up in a sexy negligee and give it to Marco Rubio like a box of Balthazar petit-fours. The island’s power grid just collapsed, the island has endured three months of a US blockade, 11 million people don’t have enough food, medical supplies are being rationed, tourism is zero, fuel is so low it costs an average worker a year’s salary to fill their car’s gas tank, and conditions are getting still worse.

Sewage backups are nothing new, it’s been a century-plus of bullshit for the people of Cuba, courtesy of the US!

On May 1, 1953, my great-grandpa Hugh, then a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, took a ride on the first Delta flight from Atlanta to Havana, because with US support Fulgencio Batista had returned from exile in Florida to open up the island for business. It quickly became a swingin’ playground for norteamericano swells and shady characters!

But the income inequality was no bueno.

And that allowed a certain pair of then-young hotties, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, to slide into the DMs of the working class.

Yes, Guevara was a bit rough trade, some people are into that sort of thing. And, okay, the movie treatment also did him a lot of favors.

Also, cuter without a beard…

Anyway, so in 1959 Cuba went full commie (other than the Guantanamo base, which has stayed under US control since 1898), predictably becoming economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union after the US embargoed and President Dwight Eisenhower refused to even meet with Castro. Instead, his CIA started plotting ways to coup him out! Like trying to get mobsters to poison his milkshake, or spraying his radio-broadcast room with LSD. In 1961 John F. Kennedy even tried and failed to invade the Bay of Pigs. After that humiliating defeat, in 1962 Nikita Khrushchev brought in some missiles, JFK blockaded the harbor, there was a big crisis, and it ended with a mutual non-aggression pact. And Castro lived on until he finally died of old age in 2018.

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FURTHER READING! Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba, Wonkette affiliate link!

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Meanwhile over the past century, the US has welcomed almost every Cuban refugee who can get to our shores, as long as they don’t bring in any verboten cigars. That was, until Trump, who has been deporting Cubans in record numbers. One of his most loyal voting blocs, too!

Might Trump be able to take over Cuba, make Marco Rubio viceroy, turn it into a playground for the rich and shady again and win those Cuban-American voters back? Only if Putin will let him! Trump did Russia a major solid lifting sanctions on Russian oil last week, and he’s held the curtain open and cinched the purse so Russia can keep on attacking Ukraine.

So rum and Coca-Cola this time in Havana next year? See y’all there!

[CNN / Politico]