Cuba Is in Total Blackout as the U.S. Watches Its People Die

The people of Cuba are dying, and the United States of America is currently standing back and simply watching it happen with gleeful, steepled fingers. The only question to answer now is just how many of the island’s 10 million residents are deemed acceptable levels of death.

On Monday, the entire island nation was plunged into darkness following the inevitable total failure of the Cuban electrical grid: An eventuality and humanitarian disaster that I have been attempting to raise awareness of ever since the United States invaded Venezuela in January and made it clear that our nation intended to starve Cuba to death. Venezuelan oil, provided at very low cost (or free) as part of an exchange program with the likewise communist South American nation, was an absolute necessity to keep the degraded, corroded Cuban power grid active, as well as providing some of the country’s only large-scale state income. Without it, Cuba attempted to turn to other oil providers, but U.S. influence has since choked off token oil deliveries from the likes of Mexico. That has left Cuba without any oil for three months, and its reserves have now run dry. Until yesterday, the country was limping along on a combination of thermoelectric, solar and natural gas power, but this collapse of the power grid could very well be the last one before a full-on U.S. takeover, where we arrive with tankers full of oil and expectations of effectively running Cuba as a proxy state from here on out.

We shouldn’t need to spell out how total electrical grid collapse leads to mass death, but we will anyway. Hospitals are unable to operate, and desperately needed surgeries are being canceled across the island. Refrigeration is unavailable as massive amounts of food rot all over the island in markets and in people’s homes. Starvation is running rampant, while people are being stranded in rural communities by a lack of gasoline to fill up their cars. Millions would surely desire to leave Cuba, and millions already have in the last decade as the island’s population shrinks, but where can they go? The now U.S.-dominated Venezuela is no longer a safe port. The United States continues to decry “mass migration,” but then simultaneously forces the scenario where millions of desperate, starving people have little choice but to do exactly that. And the likes of Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have long since indicated that they doesn’t give a single shit about how many of those people die. I should note that the direness of this situation is receiving a shameful level of media coverage, with so much attention taken up by our still-ongoing war in Iran.

American news is treating Cuba 🇨🇺’s blackout like a camping trip while Cubans are preparing body bags. Incubators, water treatment plants, life support machines, they’re all off. This is another 🇺🇸 massacre of innocent people.

— LA Legault ⚜️✌🏻 (@lalegault.bsky.social) Mar 16, 2026 at 10:28 PM

Trump, in fact, is already just acting as if the U.S. has officially taken over Cuba, a place he recently suggested could be under the direct control of Rubio following a “friendly takeover.” On Monday in the Oval Office, in the midst of posing for the cameras and signing an executive order, Trump was asked about Cuba and said not only that he thought we would be “taking Cuba” in the immediate future, but that he had the right to do “anything I want.”

“I do believe I’ll be the honor of–have the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said. “That would be good. That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba. In some form, yeah. I mean, whether I free it, or take it … I think I can do anything I want with it, to tell you the truth.”

So what, then, does the United States actually want before it steps in to do the smallest possible amount of mitigation of the mass death that is currently unfolding in the country? The answer, as revealed by The New York Times reporting yesterday, would seem to be what we have long suspected: The symbolic ouster of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the installation of a flunky who will take orders from the United States, allowing for Cuba’s transition into a proper U.S. vassal state. It would echo the Trump administration’s Venezuela playbook by changing almost nothing in the personnel involved in running the country, but merely searching for someone spineless who is willing to take orders, as Nicolas Maduro’s former vice president Delcy Rodriguez has proven to be.

Trump: "I do believe I'll be having the honor of taking Cuba. That's a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form. I think I can do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Mar 16, 2026 at 5:04 PM

It’s also yet another demonstration of the fact that for Trump, none of these regime changes, nor the war in Iran, are really about geopolitical gamesmanship or national ideologies: They’re entirely about personal respect and fealty. Trump is targeting any nation whose leadership has failed to properly fete or at least placate him, because raging narcissism supersedes any other motivation for him. He doesn’t care about “ending communism” in Cuba, or bringing democracy to its people–just look at Venezuela, where Chavismo technically remains and there are no scheduled elections. A U.S. overthrow might leave entities like Cuba’s GAESA, its military-controlled business conglomerate intact, because Trump is not in the business of ousting oligarchs. He doesn’t care if the Cuban people live or die, or about the desires of Cuban Americans to completely topple the existing government there. He’ll simply leave the existing communist system in place with a few symbolic, token changes, as long as he can find a few flunkies to run the place who will say nice things to him when he has them on the phone. All he’s ever wanted is to be made to feel big and powerful by everyone he encounters, and to “achieve” historic plaudits like being the President who finally brought down the Cuban regime. Like Ozymandias, he sees his own obsolescence coming and is raging against it as he quests for impressive achievements.

Just how willing is Trump to preserve the status quo, as long as U.S. businesses eventually get to ransack Cuba for parts? He’ll even leave a Castro in power. The U.S. has reportedly promised no action against Castro family members, who still wield much power behind the scenes in Cuba, and the U.S. negotiations have reportedly flowed largely through Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of prior ruler Raúl Castro. It is entirely likely that following the removal of President Miguel Díaz-Canel as a sacrificial lamb, that “Raulito” Castro will be effectively given the reins of the country behind the scenes, while another token President is installed to officially hold the position, to keep the “Castro” name out of the spotlight. Although they’ll all, at the end of the day, likely be answering to Marco Rubio, who has been planning his Cuban vengeance from birth.

In the meantime, though, and I can’t stress this enough–the Cuban people ARE DYING, and we are letting it happen. A massive humanitarian crisis is unfolding 90 miles off the shore Florida, and no amount of political stammering can cover up the fact that the United States could make this mass death stop instantly if it wanted to. Pity the people of Cuba, whose wealthy and fattened neighbor looks on in disinterest as they face annihilation.