00:02:19.460And that's what many media outlets are doing.
00:02:21.800But to try and understand what Trump is looking to accomplish and what might come next, we reached out to people who are generally aligned with Trump on Cuba to try and understand the thinking and what the end goals might be.
00:02:35.880Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
00:02:40.200His career spanned the globe with Agence France-Presse and the Wall Street Journal when he was a journalist.
00:02:46.020Then he had a stint in the State Department in the Bush administration before joining the Heritage Foundation.
00:02:51.440We caught up with him at his home near Washington, D.C.
00:02:55.580So, Mike, a lot of people looking at what's happening with the Trump administration in Cuba.
00:03:12.600Are they attempting to bring Cuba into the fold?
00:03:15.760Are they just being mean, inhumanitarian people?
00:03:19.020No, I mean, the mean inhumanitarian people are the members of the Cuban regime. I think the first option that you gave, regime change, I think that is very clearly what's going on.
00:03:32.900I was asked in Congress last year by, I think, a senator from Hawaii whether they were trying to do regime change.
00:03:43.100Marco Rubio answered very quickly, yeah, that's codified.
00:03:47.940The Helms-Burton Law codifies our desire for regime change in Cuba.
00:03:52.360So every, I would say every administration since Eisenhower, with perhaps with the exceptions of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, but every other administration, including Clinton, have sought regime change in Cuba.
00:05:58.240Yeah, I mean, since I have a Canadian audience, let me just tell you that I think it's shameful that anybody would go to Cuba under its present conditions there.
00:06:08.320And a lot of it is, as you know, I'm not saying, I'm not breaking news here.
00:06:14.880You know, the poor Cuban women try to do what they can, some of them.
00:06:25.300The food, Cuba is an incredible fertile place.
00:06:30.160Cuba was, you know, you can, if a little bit of earth gathered on your windowsill,
00:06:38.720you know, a couple of days later, you'd have a flower growing.
00:06:40.980That Cuba cannot feed itself is a testament to socialism. Cuba is now importing sugar. Cuba was a powerhouse for centuries since Cuba started trying sugar cane as an industry in the early 1600s, in 1600, in fact.
00:07:03.560And soon that was a thriving industry until the late 60s and 70s when that ran into the ground.
00:07:11.040And now Cuba is importing its own sugar.
00:11:29.200It's not safe because it's picking it up.
00:11:32.980So, yeah, I mean, that is a national security threat.
00:11:36.640But if we have all these military bases and, you know, the Southern Command is down there, and if China is able to tap into all of this intelligence, that's actually a big national security threat to the United States.
00:11:51.600so let's talk about venezuela because when january 3rd the operation to get maduro happens
00:12:02.020um i'll plead ignorance and perhaps i should have known this uh that was the first i heard that
00:12:10.220maduro was actually protected by cuban mercenaries cuban guards how deep was the relationship between
00:12:19.840the Castro regime in Cuba and the Maduro regime in Venezuela?
00:12:26.040But let's go back to the previous question as well, because we left out some of the heinous
00:12:30.040things that Cuba does that are not listening posts.
00:12:35.280Cuba is one of the reasons why Cuba is such a threat.
00:12:40.020Cuba is actually deeply, deeply involved in instability here in the United States.
00:12:44.080For example, let me jog your memory back to April 2024 when we had all these demonstrations, all these pro-Hamas demonstrations on U.S. campuses, and we had the takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.
00:13:04.300So about two hours before those people went to Hamilton Hall and broke into Hamilton Hall and took it over very violently, they had been at the headquarters of the People's Forum in midtown Manhattan, where they were being instructed by a Cuban agent, Manolo de los Santos, who's the head of the People's Forum, who has trained in Cuba for many, many years.
00:13:26.960he gave them a speech they had workshops on what to do and then those people then they broke up
00:13:33.220and they said now we're going to give you enough time to get to Colombia and they marched on April
00:13:37.30030th and took over and and it wasn't just that the reason I'm zeroing in focusing on the takeover
00:13:44.340on April 30th of Hamilton Hall is because that was the most graphic but the whole demonstration
00:13:49.400had been orchestrated by these pro-Cuba groups and in fact that September and I can share it
00:13:55.920with you later if you want. That September, the foreign minister of Cuba met with the activists
00:14:01.800in Harlem at the Apollo Theater. I have the video. I have the video of that meeting where
00:14:11.320you can see Bruno Rodriguez meeting and talking to the activists. So a lot of the stuff that
00:14:17.700happens on our street is really programmed in Cuba or people trained by Cuba. Cuba, for 67 years,
00:14:29.360the 67 years of the Castro dictatorship, has this pattern of training our adversaries trying to
00:14:37.480create harm to us. Now, on the question of Maduro, yeah, that was very well known. We kept talking
00:14:45.080about it. In fact, at one point, I think that one regional expert, a former foreign minister of
00:14:53.080Mexico, put the number, I think, at the height of 15,000 Cubans in Caracas running things. You
00:15:00.080talk about people who have been tortured or interrogated in Caracas, and they said that at
00:15:06.240some point, somebody with a Cuban accent would come in and take over the interrogation. And that
00:15:13.820it's not new let's not forget that john mccain talked about being interrogated by cubans in
00:15:17.900vietnam so that is something that the cubans have uh have have mastered and we did know that the
00:15:24.300people completely around uh maduro were not venezuelans maduro after all was when chavez
00:15:31.640was dying uh there was a question of of appointing someone else to replace him and that someone else
00:15:38.500was Diosdado Cabello, today the head of the National Assembly, and the Cubans said, this
00:15:44.780is going back to 2013, 2012, when Chavez died.
00:15:50.560The reason I mentioned both here is because there's a question of when he actually died,
00:15:54.780whether he died in December of 2012 or whether he died later on in 2013, no one knows.
00:16:00.260Um, and, and, and, and Raul Castro then already in, even though Fidel hadn't died, Raul was,
00:16:09.040Raul Castro said, no, no, no, it has to be, it has to be, uh, Maduro. It has to be Nicolas
00:16:14.380Maduro. People describe Maduro as a simple bus driver. Uh, no, he, I mean, he was a bus driver
00:16:21.100at one point, but actually he was somebody also trained in Cuba by the Cubans and the Cubans
00:16:26.740saw him as an asset. They did not trust the Venezuelans
00:16:38.000And I just remember the foreign minister's name, Carlos Castaneda,
00:16:42.680again, a regional expert. He and others have said that
00:16:46.380two years ago, Maduro actually wanted to leave.
00:16:51.180He wanted to say, well, yes, I'll leave.
00:16:53.740And the Cubans said to him, no, Mr. President, you are the president of this country. You go back to the presidential palace and act presidential. You're not leaving. And so there's a question of whether Maduro was kept in place, was being safeguarded by Cubans or whether because he did not trust the Venezuelans or actually the Cubans were making sure that he would not leave Caracas.
00:17:20.000You're making it sound like Cuba had colonized Venezuela.
00:17:22.900That's actually, that is often said by members of the Venezuelan opposition who deeply dislike that Cuban presence in Caracas.
00:18:27.380And that's when he started sending, that's when Venezuela, it was under Chavez, that Venezuela started sending Cuba all this oil for free or at subsidized prices.
00:18:40.080And Cuba, having lost its sugar daddy, the Soviet Union, in 1991, all of a sudden, 10 years later,
00:18:47.000It goes through a special period, that's what it was called in the 90s, but then it finds Venezuela, which is oil-rich, willing to support the Castro regime.
00:19:00.580People do talk about it as a colonial relationship.
00:19:03.580How detrimental is it for the Cuban regime, for President Diaz-Canel to have lost that Venezuelan oil pipeline?
00:19:20.280It's everything. It means everything. And that's the reason why we can have the situation that we have now where the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are making the demands that they're making.
00:19:34.900If Venezuela, if Maduro was still in place, Cuba would still be receiving all the oil that it needs, and there would be no problem.
00:19:43.480The same family and regime continue to repress the population and stay in power as long as it wanted to.
00:19:51.420So there are talks. That's been confirmed.
00:19:53.620the um the cuban regime uh president diaz canal says not no regime change but clearly that is
00:20:02.840what secretary rubio has said they want that's what president trump wants um is it realistic
00:20:10.300that we could see some change or what are the negotiating points that the united states is
00:20:14.820actually pushing for with the trump administration perhaps accept the current people staying in power
00:24:28.200these two people that don't pay attention to geopolitics seem like very unconnected events
00:24:35.080why is he starting a war on iran why is he going after cuba why is he going after venezuela
00:24:39.540connect them for me mike well these are all uh adversaries of the united states people who make
00:24:45.200life uh very hard for us i mean more than russia and china russia and china are the big adversaries
00:24:51.700Let's be clear about that. And China is probably going to be the main adversary of the United States and the entire West, also of Canada in this century.
00:25:03.260However, Iran and Cuba can make life very difficult for the United States. Cuba, for reasons I've already discussed, and we can discuss them further, Iran has a series of proxies, whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's the Houthis, whether it's Hamas.
00:25:19.660these are all proxies of Iran. These are not separate entities. This is Iran.
00:25:26.620So I think what Trump is trying to do is getting rid of these historic problems
00:25:32.820that the United States has had, one for 67 years, Cuba, but the other one for, what is it, 79?
00:25:46.060Yeah, that's right. 47 years. So one is 67, the other one is 47. And Trump wants to solve these. Now, whether he will or not, it's another issue we're seeing right now. Apparently, the streets are removed. They're announcing that it is open today, which is good news, I suppose, for all of us.
00:26:05.040And I personally think that the job in Iran, that Trump needs to finish a job in Iran, and that that job is to make sure that the moolahs are no longer in power.
00:26:20.140But these guys have all been acting together, working in coordination, supporting each other.
00:26:26.620I mean, there's 15,000 Cubans in Ukraine, fighting Ukraine.
00:26:31.220People, it's amazing to me how Canadians and Europeans and even Americans who proudly have the Ukrainian flag next to their icon, next to their persona on Twitter, or they fly these flags in their front yard, will turn around and also be very pro-Castro, be very pro-Cuba.
00:26:50.220You know, Cuba is an ally of Putin. Cuba is a strong ally. The reason why Putin insisted
00:26:58.360on getting a ship of oil into Cuba, which he did last week, is because Putin sees Cuba as
00:27:06.540what it has been, this unsinkable aircraft carrier 90 miles from our border, 90 miles from the U.S.
00:27:13.300coast. And as I said, 15,000 Cubans reportedly are now in Ukraine. So again, I question the
00:27:21.940people who feel that Ukraine, and I'm very pro, I think Ukraine should be a free and independent
00:27:28.820and sovereign country. I think Putin is a really bad person. I don't want to use a
00:27:36.800language on a family podcast um but but but but um you can't be pro-ukraine and pro-cuba at the
00:27:46.400same time or pro that's right you could be pro-cuba you cannot be pro-ukraine and pro-castro
00:27:50.600at the same time all right mike gonzalez thanks so much for the time today oh well brian it's
00:27:56.660been an entire pleasure when we come back author activist and castro regime critic cumberto
00:28:02.640Fontova on where the Cuban-American community is and his views on the end goals for Trump and Cuba.
00:28:11.600There were so many missed opportunities to catch this before the devastating thing happened.
00:28:18.360A third of them we found literally in the phone book. These people were not afraid.
00:28:24.100They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them. They knew they had escaped justice,
00:28:29.020that they were going to die in their beds.
00:28:31.040When I give talks at law schools is that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority, and it's empowering a minority that's a guild across the country, and it's a fairly elite guild, and the guild is lawyers.
00:28:40.000Families who were split by referendum and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum because they were so angry at each other because of the emotions on both sides.
00:28:52.660The reason he was assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space,
00:28:57.460but because the gun that he was creating had other applications that made him and the gun very dangerous.
00:29:08.020It's finally here. A new season of Canada Did What?
00:29:11.660Post-media podcast that revisits the big Canadian political events you might think you remember
00:29:17.040and tells you the real story you never knew.
00:31:50.360There is Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying exactly what Mike Gonzalez was talking about.
00:31:55.960According to Rubio, no one knows what's happening in the talks, at least from the American side, other than Rubio himself and President Trump.
00:32:03.420At the top of the podcast, we played a clip of President Trump saying that after he's done with Iran militarily, the United States might stop by Cuba.
00:32:11.980A new poll from the Miami Herald shows that among Cuban Americans, the idea of an American military intervention in Cuba is actually quite popular.
00:32:21.520That's where we begin our conversation with Humberto Fontova, the man behind books such as Fidel, Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, and The Longest Romance, Mainstream Media, and Fidel Castro.
00:32:32.700We caught up with him at his home in southern Louisiana.
00:32:36.820Umberto, of course, you know, dealing with Cuba in the sense of American policy, always a lot of it comes back to how Cuban Americans are feeling.
00:32:46.020I know there's a new poll out from the Miami Herald showing 79% of Cuban Americans in the Miami, Broward County, Palm Beach area say they support military intervention, either to change the regime, which is 36%, or 38% who say they support just for humanitarian needs and 5% who say for both.
00:33:10.280only 19% oppose a military intervention among Cuban Americans.
00:33:15.360I think the general public could be different,
00:33:17.820but does this surprise you that so many Cuban Americans say,
00:33:21.820Donald Trump, please send in the army?
00:34:31.300Well, for some reason, a couple of years later,
00:34:34.140most Cuban Americans voted for Donald Trump's hardline anti-communist Cuba on Cuba.
00:34:43.340I want to read out a quote from Fernand Amandi.
00:34:46.700He is described by the Miami Herald as an expert on the Cuban community.
00:34:51.860And he's the president of Ben Dixon, Amandi International,
00:34:54.960one of the two firms that conducted the poll for the Herald.
00:34:57.640And he says, it might as well be 1961 again.
00:35:01.080What the community is saying here is that they're giving a green light to the Trump administration to go in militarily in Cuba and do whatever it is they have to do to remove the regime.
00:35:11.980800 randomly selected Cubans and Cuban-Americans living in South Florida polled between April 6th to 10th.
00:35:18.900I mean, this is, you know, saying, hey, we messed up in the Bay of Pigs, but let's go with military again.
00:35:32.560By the way, you mentioned the Bay of Pigs.
00:35:34.320You do realize today is the 65th anniversary of the landing at the Bay of Pigs.
00:35:41.420Yeah, April 17th of 1961, 1,400, mostly civilian Cubans,
00:35:54.100mostly without military training, all volunteers.
00:36:00.580fought against, in the coming three days, 21,000 Soviet-led and trained troops and inflicted casualties of 10 to 1.
00:36:13.700Of course, they were defeated because the Kennedy administration canceled the air strikes that were to knock out Castro's Air Force.
00:36:24.540But that's, you know, that's another show that we can do.
00:36:27.100But it's funny you mention that because that was exactly 65 years ago.
00:36:31.620And this is, you know, we've got to realize a lot of our listeners are going,
00:36:36.120good grief, heavens, people, this stuff is 67 years old.
00:36:40.180Why do you guys keep this grudge against Castro?
00:36:44.760You know, what is it that you guys, can't you all guys face reality?
00:36:48.920You Cuban exiles, you hardliners, you're screaming, you're brandy.
00:36:52.680Well, let me just go back a little bit.
00:36:55.020The Castro regime murdered more political prisoners in its first three years in power
00:37:03.060than Hitler's regime murdered in its first eight years in power.
00:37:09.100The Castro regime jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate,
00:37:16.920or at a just about even rate, as did Stalin's regime.
00:37:21.140The only reason that it couldn't get its hand on most people is because Cuba's population at the time of the Cuban Revolution was 6.6 million.
00:37:31.440But the rate of incarceration and political murders and tortures,
00:37:36.940the Castro regime jailed and tortured the longest suffering political prisoners in modern history.
00:37:44.920Many Cuban blacks suffered more and much longer and much more horrible incarceration in Castro's jails than Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.
00:37:56.180So that's just a little background so our listeners can realize why it is that we hold this grudge against a regime.
00:38:03.280We're just seeking justice. That's all.
00:38:05.320well it's a regime that um even to this day with the castro brothers uh gone that i just
00:38:13.200i it boggles my mind that people in my line of work would go to cuba other than to report if
00:38:22.220you're going to report as a journalist and show what's on the ground i understand but i know
00:38:27.120journalists who have gone for vacations there they they jail an awful lot of journalists there
00:38:31.300you're not allowed to do the kind of work I do
00:38:59.200which is titled The Longest Romance, The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro.
00:39:07.140This romance started even before Castro and Che Guevara gained power.
00:39:12.580And as a matter of fact, Che Guevara, thanks to media, in his diaries he wrote,
00:39:18.980right after they had taken power, his diaries were published, and he says,
00:39:23.620Much more important than guerrilla recruits for our guerrilla war against Batista
00:39:30.660were media recruits, especially American reporters, to spread our propaganda.
00:39:40.260Fidel Castro visited the New York Times in 1959,
00:39:45.100and he planted a specially minted medal on New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews.
00:39:53.140And he said, there's a picture of this on the Internet, anybody can Google, he says, without your help and without the help of the New York Times, the Cuban Revolution would have never been.
00:40:05.180So this gives you an idea of exactly what you're talking about, but it's actually worse than a handful of Canadian reporters.
00:40:11.880It's the entire world media, the Castro regime from day one, even before they gained power, they made it a point to cultivate media propaganda.
00:40:22.660this, essentially propaganda adjuncts in the international media. And the New York Times
00:40:29.120holds top place, you know, ranks at the top of that. I want to ask you, Umberto, about what is
00:40:37.660driving President Trump to do what he's doing now, though, from a political point of view.
00:40:42.720Is it the power of the Cuban and Cuban-American political operations in places like South Miami and elsewhere in the United States that they are a powerful lobby group?
00:40:58.800Do you think that he's doing this because he believes it's the right thing?
00:41:03.220Do you believe that it's just part of a larger global reset?
00:41:07.640What is driving what President Trump is trying to do in terms of trying to bring about regime change, not just here, but Venezuela, elsewhere?
00:41:17.660I think it's sincere. I really already think sincere. I don't think it's a political...
00:41:23.620By what? Well, he has lived in South Florida off and on for many years, and he has known many Cuban Americans as friends, as business associates, and so forth.
00:41:35.840In fact, you can go back to 1999, and you can see his comments on the Castro regime, and they're almost identical to what they are now.
00:41:46.880So I think he's very sincere now, but I think what they're trying to do right now is square their circle.
00:41:52.140They would love to have a Venezuelan-type solution in Cuba, but it's not going to happen.
00:41:59.720Let me ask you about that, because in Venezuela, they took Maduro and his wife, but they left the rest of the regime in place, and they're not really pushing for political reform there that we can see.
00:42:13.300Maybe it will eventually come, and I understand the argument that if you'd put in the opposition leader, the military would have killed her, no levers of power.
00:42:23.080I understand all of that. But if you just do a Venezuelan type operation, then you take out Diaz-Canel and the rest of the regime stays in place.
00:42:37.240That doesn't really get you to where you want to be, does it?
00:42:41.440No, of course not. As a matter of fact, Diaz-Canel is nothing. He's been called by some members. He's a decoy.
00:42:47.740He's out there as a decoy, you know, to accept the lame.
00:42:50.880The real power is still Raul and his family.
00:42:54.360And like I say, they're trying to square their circle.
00:42:56.820I'm guaranteed they're trying to right.
00:42:58.440But right now, the way things are going in Iran and stuff, I don't think there's going to be any military.
00:43:03.500As you see from the polls that you look at, people are saying we're not going to accept.
00:43:08.120The Cuban Americans say we don't want a Venezuelan-type situation here because they know, you know, many Venezuelans live in South Florida.
00:43:16.920that nothing really has changed substantially in Cuba, you know.
00:43:21.700And as you see from the poll, Cuban Americans want regime change.
00:43:38.260We will welcome you, your investments in Cuba and so forth.
00:43:42.220And as you can see from that same poll, if you look at,
00:43:44.380I think it was 2% or 3% said they would be willing to invest in Cuba with the current regime.
00:43:51.940You've got on the question of over three quarters of Cubans disapprove of the regime being allowed to stay in power in exchange for economic reform.
00:44:04.060So 7% strongly approve the regime being allowed to stay in power.
00:44:41.540only I and the president know what's happening. But what, you know, from the conversations you've
00:44:47.820had with people close to either the Trump administration or contacts you have in Cuba,
00:44:53.000do you have a sense of what is happening? Yeah, it's just a stalling motion. As a matter of fact,
00:44:59.040two Russian tankers have been allowed. Supposedly, there was a blockade of oil for Cuba. Well, no.
00:45:06.320Within the last couple of weeks, two Russian tankers have been allowed to dock in Cuba to unload oil, you know, because for the electric, for the grids and so forth.
00:45:19.180And plus, supplies are also reaching there from Mexico, food supplies and other things.
00:45:26.460And so I think what they're afraid of, I mean, what would happen?
00:45:30.380We want regime change here in the U.S., but in Cuba, what's going to happen with the regime change?
00:45:36.320People are going to grab anything that floats Cubans.
00:45:41.080And I couldn't blame them for doing it.
00:45:42.640But let's face it, is the U.S. population, are we in a political climate right now that we're going to accept tens of thousands of new refugees from essentially what is now a third world country?
00:45:59.500And I think that is what is holding back the regime, the administration.
00:46:04.580You see, they would love to have, you know, they're trying to square the circle, and I really don't see a solution. I really don't.
00:46:11.560What kind of opposition movement is there in Cuba? So let's say that they did get the regime change. Who could take over? Who is in there that could go in and form a government that would have some semblance of authority while you sort out democratic elections and whatnot?
00:46:34.580No, there isn't anything like that. There are some people, Rosa Maria Paya, in exile, but these are figureheads and opposition brave people, and I admire them, but they have no experience in running a government.
00:46:50.120And let's face it, Cuba's rot runs a lot deeper than they did Venezuela's, you know, because we had a full-fledged Stalinist revolution, you know, 60 years ago.
00:50:42.560Here it was when I was growing up in Cuba.
00:50:45.260I was born in 1954, but in the 40s and 50s,
00:50:48.560you know it was a owning a boat and fishing was almost a birthright for cubans well now they say
00:50:55.200all of the fisheries are for exports and nobody's allowed to go in there well let's see it you know
00:51:00.680it's easy to have pristine coral reefs when you only let three people visit them you know in 10
00:51:06.080years i uh i remember several years ago one of our great environmental activists david suzuki
00:51:12.840here in Canada was suggesting that we adopt Cuban-style agricultural practices because
00:51:18.380they're better for the environment. And my thought was, well, that will also lead to
00:51:22.860a complete collapse of production and starvation. So I'm going to say no. But final question for
00:51:30.200you. What would your message be for all the Canadians who are worried about what's going
00:51:36.800on in Cuba, not because they want freedom for the Cuban people, but they're worried about their
00:51:42.760cheap vacation being put off because of the economic and diplomatic political uncertainty
00:51:49.620down there? Well, I'll say you guys, not you in particular, but Canadians for the last 20 or 30
00:51:57.360years have been one of the main props for the regime. And I'll repeat, I'll stress again,
00:52:03.740this regime jailed, as I mentioned, jailed political prisoners at a rate that Stalin
00:52:09.840And he said, well, yeah, but Umberto, that was 56, he goes, it is essentially the same people running Cuba now that are responsible for these crimes.
00:52:20.820It is Raul Castro, his nephew and his grandchild, and the Castro family who essentially run what economy there is in Cuba.
00:52:30.500And Canadians for 30 years, 40 years, have been one of the main props of this regime.
00:52:36.380And it's interesting because you guys were one of the main opponents of doing business with apartheid South Africa.
00:52:46.160And I remember even the conservative governments back then were all for an embargo against South Africa
00:52:54.540while being against an embargo against Cuba,
00:52:58.260which jailed black political prisoners for longer and more horrible periods