The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The US has triumphantly reopened its embassy in Venezuela, returning to Caracas not as a diplomatic partner, but as the guy who kicks in your door, kidnaps your president, and then asks to use your kitchen. Nearly three months after US troops abducted former president Nicolás Maduro and flew him to a federal prison in New York, the Trump administration is now celebrating a "new chapter" in relations with the government that magically appeared after the raid.

Acting president Delcy Rodríguez, formerly Maduro’s vice-president, is now Washington’s new best friend, because nothing says sovereign democracy like having your leadership transition managed by Delta Force and a federal indictment. The State Department is very proud of reopening the embassy that’s been shut since 2019, calling it a “key milestone” in the president’s three‑phase plan for Venezuela, which appears to be: 1) invade, 2) abduct, 3) call it diplomacy.

Veteran diplomat and intelligence official Laura F Dogu has been on the ground restoring the embassy building so the US can fully resume operations, including law enforcement work, now with the added convenience of having the last president locked up in New York. Washington insists this is all about combating drug trafficking and supporting civil society, while the rest of the world watches the US normalize the idea that you can just snatch foreign leaders, install their understudies, and then cut the ribbon on your newly renovated embassy like it’s a mall opening.

Trump’s Cuba policy continues its speedrun of humanitarian horror. After his administration, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio playing cosplay Cold Warrior, effectively strangled Cuba’s oil supply to force regime change, the island is now living in rolling blackouts: hospitals crippled, public transport slashed, people literally sitting in the dark on the Malecón. So naturally, the White House line has been: this is how we help Cubans.

Now a sanctioned Russian tanker — yes, sanctioned by the U.S., EU, and U.K. for that little Ukraine invasion thing — is parked off Cuba with 730,000 barrels of oil, and Trump shrugs from Air Force One that he has “no problem” with it reaching port. The same guy who engineered the blockade suddenly discovers a soft spot for basic survival: “They have to survive,” he says, as though he didn’t personally tighten the noose that produced the island-wide blackouts in the first place.

He insists this doesn’t help Putin — it’s just “one boatload of oil” — while simultaneously claiming Cuba is “finished” and that whether they get the oil “is not going to matter.” So the official doctrine is: Cuba is doomed, but also we care deeply about Cuban people, which is why we cut off their fuel, wrecked their infrastructure, then magnanimously allowed a sanctioned Russian ship to toss them nine or ten days of diesel. It’s not foreign policy; it’s a hostage situation with occasional mood-based mercy.

Trump wraps it all up by saying he’d “prefer letting it in… because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things.” The people needed those things last month, when the blockade was grinding them down, and they’ll need them next month when the diesel runs out again. But sure, one reluctantly permitted tanker from a sanctioned Russian vessel totally balances out an entire U.S. strategy built on making 11 million civilians suffer until their government collapses. Freedom, Trump-Rubio style.

The Trump administration has discovered a fresh, modern way to wage war on Cuba: don’t bother with missiles when you can just suffocate a country’s fuel supply and let the maternity wards handle the casualties. After Trump threatened tariffs on any country delivering fuel to Cuba, oil imports collapsed, the grid started dying, and Havana’s hospitals are now performing the world’s darkest austerity cosplay. No tranexamic acid for cancer patients, staff who can’t afford to get to work, women giving birth at home because there’s no transport – all part of Washington’s deep concern for Cuban freedom, apparently.

Trump, who helpfully announced he could “have the honour of taking Cuba” and could “do anything I want with it”, has upgraded the six-decade embargo into an outright oil blockade that is wrecking tourism, shuttering hotels, and pushing infant mortality up in a country that once beat the US on basic health metrics. The White House press release calls this “promoting a stable, prosperous and free country for the Cuban people”; on the ground it looks more like enforced blackout chic, rotting garbage, failing water systems and a medical system being slowly garrotted.

This is all happening while US-backed carnage stretches from Iraq to Palestine to an illegal war on Iran that kicked off with the mass killing of schoolgirls. The self-proclaimed leader of the free world has streamlined its product line down to one core export: destruction. Trump thinks fear and brute force will restore American greatness; what he’s actually restoring is global clarity that US hegemony means your hospitals run out of medicine, your lights go out, and some guy in Washington congratulates himself on his “honour” of taking your country.

As Cuba struggles with massive blackouts and a collapsing power grid, Donald Trump reportedly mused about the U.S. possibly just 'taking' the island – because when a neighboring country is in crisis, obviously the responsible thing is to LARP as 19th-century imperialists with brain damage. Why send aid or support democratic reforms when you can daydream about annexation like you’re picking out a new resort property.

This is not foreign policy so much as a live reenactment of a drunk Monopoly game: the president sees 11 million people and a sovereign nation and thinks, "great location, needs work, we’ll take it." No mention of international law, self-determination, or, you know, the fact that you can’t just grab countries the way you grab classified documents and women. Just a casual little colonial fantasy thrown into the mix while Cuba literally sits in the dark.

So while Cubans endure blackouts and infrastructure collapse, the leader of the free world’s contribution is to publicly wonder if maybe the U.S. should just scoop the island up like it’s Atlantic City in a Chapter 11 sale. The Monroe Doctrine has officially been replaced with the Trump Doctrine: if it’s nearby and struggling, it’s probably for sale.