President Donald Trump said a "new dawn for Cuba" is coming, telling people to "watch what happens next" amid speculation Cuba could be the next country to face American military action.
While talking at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday, Trump discussed the U.S. Venezuela operation in January, which saw Nicolás Maduro captured "to face American justice."
Trump said this same "great strength will also bring about a day, 70 years in waiting, it's called a new dawn for Cuba, we're gonna help them out in Cuba."
"We've got a lot of great Cuban Americans," Trump said, saying that many of them were "brutally treated."
"Watch what happens," he added.
Also on Friday, while Trump was en route to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, a reporter on Air Force One asked Trump about "reports that the Pentagon's preparing for military action in Cuba?"
"Well it depends on what your definition of military action is," Trump answered.
USA Today, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter, reported that military planning was taking place for a potential Pentagon operation in Cuba. Newsweek was not able to independently verify this, but has contacted the White House, via email outside of normal working hours, for comment.
When the Air Force One reporter pushed further, asking if military action in Cuba would "look like Venezuela or Iran," Trump said: "Really it does, it depends on what your definition of military action is, as Bill Clinton would say..."
Trump was seemingly making a reference to Clinton's infamous 1998 grand jury testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, when the former president said: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Whether Cuba is next on Trump's list of states to topple has been an ongoing question since his operation in Venezuela.
He has previously threatened a "friendly takeover" of the socialist island -- a longtime foe of the U.S. -- while U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told Fox News earlier this month: "This communist dictatorship in Cuba? Their days are numbered."
Last month, Trump said in the Oval Office that he believed he would have "the honor of taking Cuba."
"Whether I free it, take it -- I think I could do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth," he continued. "They are a very weakened nation right now."
He also said asserted "Cuba is next" during a speech at an investment forum in Miami.
Cuba is facing an economic and humanitarian crisis, with people on the island subjected to rolling blackouts and limited access to food and medicine, with Cuban officials long blaming decades-long American sanctions.
Cuba has been under U.S. embargo since the 1959 revolution, which the U.N. General Assembly has repeatedly voted in favor of lifting. While in office, U.S. President Barack Obama briefly eased the sanctions, but the first Trump administration reimposed and hardened them, doubling down in his second term.
Things have become worse for Cuba since Trump's Venezuela operation because Venezuela has historically been the island's biggest oil supplier, meaning Maduro's capture cut off Cuba's access to its supply.
"Cuba has never said about attacking the United States or interfering with the United States affairs," Díaz-Canel said. "However, you hear that Cuba is next, that Cuba is going to be next, there's a way out, that they're going to take over Cuba. So, from the position of responsibility within the leadership of the country, that is a warning. And we need to responsibly protect our people, protect our project and protect our country. So, we are preparing ourselves for defense."