President Donald Trump denied that he deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean to intimidate Cuba one day after his Justice Department indicted former Cuban President Raul Castro.“No, not at all,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday when asked if the deployment was an intimidation tactic. Trump, describing U.S. action in Cuba as humanitarian, called the isolated communist nation “a failed country.”
“They don’t have electricity, they don’t have money; they don’t have really anything, they don’t have food,” the president said. “We’re going to help them because I want to help them on a humanitarian basis.”
He added: “We have the Cuban American population, much of it living in Miami, Florida, that’s a great group of people, amazing group of people, industrious, just they’re great Americans. They’ve wanted this stuff, and they want to go back to their country; they want to help their country.”
Trump welcomed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement on Wednesday that federal prosecutors had indicted Castro, 94, and five others. The indictment is connected to the Feb. 24, 1996, attack on two aircraft operated by the Miami-based Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Charges include conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and destruction of aircraft.
