What's a bored Donald Trump to do? Apparently, target Cuba

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What’s a bored Donald Trump to do? Apparently, target Cuba
As U.S. surveillance flights over the island increase, the president could be betting on action to regain his mojo

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published May 12, 2026 9:40AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump is “bored” with his war of choice in Iran. That’s according to the Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire, who recently reported that after operations “proved far more difficult and lasted far longer than he expected,” the president wants to “move on.” Ending America’s war with the Islamic Republic has turned out to be beyond Trump’s skills as an allegedly brilliant negotiator, whose only strategy is to bully and sue if he doesn’t get his way, and his two “peace envoys,” Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have also come up short. Trump wants quick “victories” and the Nobel Peace Prize, so he’s trying to manifest a victory by simply saying there is one. But Iran has Trump backed into a corner, and there’s no way out.

The central problem is that Trump thought the Iranians would, in his words, “cry uncle” after he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the first air assault on Feb. 28, apparently not realizing that the Islamic Republican Guard Corps would double their resolve to fight back. To use another of Trump’s terms, they had no idea how many cards Iran had to play.

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Trump has been talking about invading and occupying Cuba for months, but that prospect has seemed less likely as the quagmire in Iran has developed. His eagerness to take action against the island nation was more or less a holdover of the giddy days in January when the U.S. was kidnapping Venezuela’s president and taking over their oil fields with no resistance. Trump apparently thought that operation went so smoothly because everyone was awestruck by his manly power and strength, and that he’d been foolish to avoid war all this time. It was easy! Now, the thinking seems to go, an invasion of Cuba could be just the ticket to remind the world of his strength — and to distract from his failure in Iran.

The president has said publicly that he would have “the honor of taking Cuba,” and with the U.S. running a blockade on the country for months, to all intents and purposes it has already taken military action there. On May 1 he said he was considering sending the USS Abraham Lincoln to Cuba to force an immediate surrender. It’s currently in the Arabian Sea, but he seems to think it could make “ a little excursion” to topple the government and take it over. Trump even said as much — that it could “come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say: ‘Thank you very much. We give up.’ ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/05/12/whats-a-bored-donald-trump-to-do-apparently-target-cuba/