Communism claimed another victim this week.
One dictator's days finally caught up with him.
And Trump made one prediction about Cuba that has the Castro regime in full panic mode.
Cuba's lifeline just got cut
Trump flew back to Washington, D.C. Sunday night aboard Air Force One after spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago watching his military operation unfold in Venezuela.
Reporters pressed him about what comes next now that Nicolas Maduro sits in a New York jail cell facing narco-terrorism charges.
Trump didn't hold back when asked about Cuba.
"Cuba literally is ready to fall," Trump told reporters.
The communist regime in Havana watched its main source of income vanish overnight when U.S. Special Forces grabbed Maduro from his compound Saturday morning.
For more than two decades, Venezuela shipped roughly 30,000 to 50,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba — essentially for free.
The Castro regime used that oil to keep the lights on and sold the surplus for desperately needed hard currency.
Now those tankers aren't coming.
"Cuba now has no income," Trump explained to reporters.
"They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. Now they're not getting any of it."
Satellite tracking shows zero oil tankers leaving Venezuelan ports for Cuba, according to energy experts at the University of Texas.
The regime can't buy oil on the open market because they're broke.
Cuba's power grid runs on the heavy crude that arrived weekly from Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.
Even with that steady supply, Havana faced 10-hour blackouts every day in 2025.
Trump believes Cuba will collapse without military action
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick jumped in during the Air Force One gaggle to spell out Cuba's predicament.
"They've lived off of Venezuela, right?" Lutnick said.
"The economics were all Venezuelan. That's why you said the protective force of Maduro was Cuban. They were Cuban guards, so they were just paying Cuba. When that money stops—"
Trump finished Lutnick's thought when a reporter asked if the U.S. was planning military action against Cuba.
"We're not. I think it's just going to fall," Trump stated.
"I don't think we need any action. It looks like it's going down."
"It's going down for the count. You ever watch a fight? They go down for the count," Trump continued.
"And Cuba looks like it's going down."
Senator Lindsey Graham yelled "Yes!" when Trump predicted Cuba's collapse.
The regime sent 32 of its special forces soldiers to guard Maduro in Venezuela.
All 32 died when American troops stormed the compound.
"A lot of Cubans were killed yesterday," Trump said.
"The bodyguards, trying to protect [Maduro]."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made destroying the Castro regime his personal mission.
"If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned — at least a little bit," Rubio warned Cuban officials Saturday.
Rubio revealed that Cuban intelligence agents didn't just guard Maduro — they ran Venezuela's entire internal security apparatus.
"It was Cubans that guarded Maduro," Rubio told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.
"He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards."
Those same operatives monitored loyalty among Venezuelan officials and military officers to prevent coups.
This is different from when the Soviet Union collapsed
Cuba survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when its economy shrank by roughly 30 percent.
But 2026 is nothing like 1991.
Back then, Hugo Chavez emerged in Venezuela by 1999 to replace Soviet oil shipments.
Russia and China helped stabilize Cuba's economy through the 1990s with loans and trade.
This time nobody's coming to rescue the Castro regime.
Russia is burning through its treasury fighting in Ukraine.
China already stopped extending credit after Cuba defaulted on previous loans.
Mexico sent emergency fuel shipments in late 2025, but Trump just put President Claudia Sheinbaum on notice that "something's going to have to be done with Mexico."
Trump also threatened massive tariffs on any nation that tries to replace Venezuelan oil for Cuba.
The Navy is expected to tighten its blockade of Cuban ports to prevent Iran or other actors from sneaking in supplies.
Cuba's power grid is ancient and crumbling.
Energy experts predict the island's thermoelectric plants will go offline permanently within two weeks without Venezuelan oil.
Havana already suffered 20-hour blackouts in parts of the country during 2025.
The grid collapsed completely several times last year.
Without electricity, there's no water pumps, no refrigeration for food, no hospitals functioning.
The regime also faces another nightmare scenario.
An estimated 15,000 Cuban intelligence agents, military advisors, and doctors were stationed in Venezuela.
They're fleeing back to Cuba in a panic after watching U.S. forces dismantle Maduro's government.
These operatives are returning to an island with no food, no power, and most importantly, no money to pay them.
A disgruntled security apparatus coming home from a failed mission is historically how regimes fall from within.
Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist, told NBC News the situation is dire.
"If oil supply were to cease entirely, the Cuban economy would grind to a halt," Vidal explained.
The collapse is happening faster than the 1990s.
When the USSR fell, it took Cuba's economy four years to hit rock bottom before slowly recovering.
Tourism, remittances from Cuban Americans, and foreign investment eventually rescued the economy.
None of those lifelines exist today.
Tourism crashed 20 percent in 2025 compared to 2024.
The 2025 sugar harvest was half of 2024's already dismal numbers.
Nearly a quarter of Cuba's population has fled since 2020.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel tried to sound defiant Saturday at a rally in Havana.
"For Venezuela, of course for Cuba, we are prepared to give our blood," Diaz-Canel proclaimed.
But the regime's bluster can't change economic reality.
Trump and Rubio watched Maduro get snatched without firing a shot.
Now they're watching Cuba's communist government run out of options.
"People want to go back to Cuba, and they want to work in Cuba, but Cuba's going down for the count," Trump concluded.
The Castro regime survived the Cold War, the Soviet collapse, and decades of American embargoes.
Sources:
- Tim Hains, "Trump: 'Cuba Looks Like It's Going Down,' 'I Don't Think We Need To Do Anything'," RealClearPolitics, January 5, 2026.
- Megan Henney, "Maduro captured by US military forces in Venezuela, Cuba economy threatened," Fox Business, January 4, 2026.
- Patrick Oppmann, "Cuba is left reeling in the aftermath of the Venezuela strike," CNN, January 4, 2026.
- Carmen Sesin and Orlando Matos, "Cubans brace for even more economic devastation amid threat of no Venezuelan oil," NBC News, January 6, 2026.
- Dartunorro Clark and Rebecca Shabad, "Marco Rubio says he believes Cuba is 'in a lot of trouble'," NBC News, January 4, 2026.
- Ben Geman, "Trump team puts a target on Cuba, with threats and oil blockade," The Washington Post, January 6, 2026.