Congratulations, Morning Briefing Readers! You have officially made it through an entire Kruiser-free week. I know it was tough, but I believe he'll be back on Monday after he's finished switching all the loofahs on the golf carts in The Villages.
In the meantime, you get one more day of me, and instead of posting more videos of Tampon Tim and that creep Eric Swalwell, I'm going to talk about Cuba. Because, while the capture of Nicolás Maduro has been the hottest story of the week, I've had more people ask me about Cuba than anything else. I'll try not to make this too boring.
Cuba's "president" Miguel Díaz-Canel is all upset this week because... "imperialism"... but really because his sugar daddy Maduro is now in U.S. custody and can no longer provide him with cheap oil. And by oil, I mean the kind we use for energy and cars and stuff, not the kind Maduro's roomie at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Diddy, used for his "freak-offs."
For those of you who don't know the background, back in 2004, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez got together and formed what I like to call the good ol' boys communist club, aka the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America or ALBA, where they basically sat around and made deals with each other and talked smack about the United States. Fidel was all like you send me some cheap oil, Hugo, and I'll train your military so that it protects you, suppresses your countrymen, and ensures you stay in power. That's why we blew up something like 32 Cubans the other day when we nabbed Maduro.
Anyway, back to our boy, Díaz-Canel. This guy had the nerve to speak up on Wednesday at some official Commie Party session and say, "We need to start thinking that perhaps what's going wrong in Cuba is our party's fault."
Um, you think? It only took you 67 years to realize that maybe this communism stuff isn't all it's cracked up to be?
But, unfortunately, this wasn't exactly the "come to Jesus" moment you might hope and think it was. Rather than admit that Cuba's disastrous experiment has been a failure, he insisted that the communists try their communism even harder, suggesting that "every problem must be addressed from the party's foundation, with greater discipline, ideological firmness, and by going the extra mile as militants."
He also put out some official message to the Cuban people about how everything they do in 2026 should be "imbued with Fidel's fighting spirit, his deep love for the people, and his unwavering commitment to social justice."
I don't know about Fidel's fighting spirt, but I'm pretty sure the Cuban people would just like some food and for their power to stay on more than 12 hours at a time.
I won't pause for another history lesson here, but on many occasions throughout the years, this type of language has been used by dictatorships and authoritarian states whose leaders knew they were going down soon.
And if Donald Trump has anything to do with it, I'm sure this one will. "I don't think you can have much more pressure, other than going in and blasting the hell out of the place....Cuba is in a lot of trouble," he told Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.
Cuba still gets a little oil from Mexico. It's not much, and narco-president Claudia Sheinbaum gets around U.S. sanctions by declaring it a "humanitarian gesture" or saying she's fulfilling old contracts. Last year, Mexico was actually Cuba's biggest supplier, until about September or so when Marco Rubio took a little trip down to Mexico City and that number dropped off a bit.
Despite her affinity for Fidel's leftover garbage, she said this week that she will not pick up where Maduro left off. I'm sure Trump and Rubio have put the fear of tariffs and sanctions God in her.
Russia sends Cuba a little oil now and then, but it would have to stop bombing Ukraine for a minute to become a true knight in shining armor. China probably could step in — it doesn't care about sanctions — but it's been dealt such a huge blow in Latin America lately with the loss of Maduro and the rising right-wing bloc led by Javier Milei that it's probably too busy panicking.
Someone like Colombia's Gustavo Petro or Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could be a wildcard, but Petro was just summoned to the White House to have a nice friendly lunch with Trump soon and Lula's economy can't really afford to get on Trump's bad side either. The commies south of our border are losing allies left and right.
Speaking of Fidel, if the ol' boy was still alive, he'd turn 100 this year. Wouldn't it be nice if Trump gave the people a real reason to celebrate the occasion? I know the Cuban people want it. Ever since we took out Maduro, I've seen them on social media begging Trump to do the same for them. They promise they'll even rise up and help if needed. One guy I saw earlier basically told every other country to go screw itself and let Trump do whatever he wants. Otherwise, "I'll tell my mom she can eat her rice with a side of 'international law'" he said.
https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2026/01/09/the-morning-briefing-n4948057
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