US President Donald Trump's latest comments on his government's blockade on Cuba Monday evening amounted to "boasting of a war crime," one journalist said after the president told the press that the Caribbean island is a "failed nation" weeks after Trump himself cut off Cuba's main source of energy and threatened countries with tariffs if they provided the government with oil.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump listed some of the impacts of the blockade the White House imposed after invading Venezuela last month and pushing for control of its oil supply.
"They don't even have jet fuel to get their airplanes to take off. They're clogging up their runway. We're talking to Cuba right now... and they should absolutely make a deal, because it's really a humanitarian threat," said the president. "There's an embargo, there's no oil, there's no money, there's no anything."
Carlos F. de Cossio, Cuba's deputy minister of foreign affairs, pointed out that it has been "frequent for US officials and diplomats to claim that US aggression is not responsible for difficulties in Cuba," as the trade embargo maintained by the US for more than six decades has impeded medications, food, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching Cubans.
It seems those officials "don't listen to their president," said de Cossio.
Trump commented on the impact of his ramped-up blockade as Al Jazeera and Reuters reported that just 44 of Havana's 106 sanitation trucks have been able to operate in recent weeks due to the fuel shortage, leading waste to pile up on the Cuban capital's streets and raising fears of public health risks.
The lack of fuel has also caused blackouts in cities and rural areas, and one diplomat told The Guardian on Sunday that "it's a matter of weeks" before the blockade could cause extreme shortages of water and food.
While appearing to express concern for the Cuban public, Trump described how he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio "are overseeing a siege on Cuba... with no discernible foreign policy objective other than sadism," said Emma Vigeland of Majority Report.
"This is not an embargo. The US has had an embargo on Cuba for over 60 years, and it has failed" to force a regime change, said Vigeland.
The anti-war group Code Pink added: "If Cuba is a 'failed nation' then why has the U.S. spent 66 years trying and failing to destroy it?"
"Cuba isn’t failing, it’s being suffocated," said the group.
Trump repeated his demand that Cuban officials "make a deal," but Cuban officials have said they are open to coming to an agreement with the US. Meanwhile, Drop Site News reported last week that Rubio has been falsely claiming negotiations are taking place in an apparent bid to ultimately force regime change through other means.
One reporter asked the president Monday evening whether he would consider "an operation like the one in Venezuela," where US forces last month abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and killed dozens of people, including many Cuban soldiers and guards.
Trump did not confirm or deny whether he would take military action in Cuba, but issued a veiled threat: "It wouldn't be a very tough operation, as you can figure."
Also on Monday, over 100 Cuban artists signed on to a call for "international solidarity" against the blockade.
"The empire says that Cuba represents a threat to its national security, which is ridiculous and implausible. It has imposed an oil blockade, resulting in the paralysis of hospitals, schools, industries, and transportation. They try to prevent our doctors from saving lives; they try to paralyze our free and universal education system, to plunge us into famine, into a lack of energy to guarantee access to drinking water and cooking food; in short, they aim to slowly and bloodily extinguish a country," reads the open letter.
"Cuba resists and will resist this inhumane aggression, but it counts on the active solidarity of all honest, humanist, and good-willed men and women of the world," it continues. "It is about preventing a genocidal act and saving a heroic people whose only 'crime and threat' has been to defend their sovereignty."
