Trump Threatens Cuba: I Can ‘Take it’ and ‘Do Anything I Want With it’

President Donald Trump said he will soon “be having the honor of taking Cuba” while speaking to reporters about his plans for the Caribbean island at the White House on Monday.

“That’s a big honor,” Trump said.

“Taking Cuba?” Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy immediately followed up.

The president answered yes, “in some form” he will be “taking” the country.

“Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They are a very weakened nation,” Trump said.

He then ripped Cuba’s communist leaders over the years, including Fidel Castro for being “extremely violent.”

“That’s how they governed. They governed with violence,” Trump added.

His answer came after Doocy initially asked Trump about his plans for Cuba — and whether a military operation would look more like the strikes against Iran or the capture of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela.

Trump said he did not want to answer that, but said his administration was “talking” to Cuba about making a deal. That followed The New York Times reporting last week that Cuban officials were having secret meetings with the Trump administration as the country grapples with a fuel shortage and “unstable” power grid.

The president has made it clear in recent weeks he will put more attention on Cuba following Operation Epic Fury. Trump last week floated a “friendly takeover” of Cuba that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be in charge of.

Trump said Rubio is the best man to help Cuba move from its communist government to a more pro-USA regime, because the Cubans “trust” him and because he speaks Spanish, “which is always nice and always helpful,” he added.

“It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter because they’re really down to, as they say , fumes. They have no energy, they have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis,” Trump said last week. “And we don’t want to see that. But they were very very bad to a lot of people, as you know.”

He echoed those comments on Monday.

“It’s a failed nation. They have no money, they have no oil, they have no nothing,” Trump said, before complimenting the country’s “nice landscape.” He also said Cuba has “great people” and he would like to help Cuban exiles who fled the country years ago for the USA.

Watch above.

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