'The end is near': Trump ally stuns with blatant call to 'colonize' neighboring country

Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), a close ally of President Donald Trump, openly cheered the toppling of the Cuban government on Thursday, posting an image on social media of the Caribbean nation plastered with the logos of American companies like Walmart, Exxon Mobil and McDonald’s, leaving onlookers stunned.

“When the inevitable happens in Cuba & the narcoterrorist dictatorship is no more, there won’t be a company that won’t want to invest in the stunning, beautiful island of my birth,” Giménez wrote in a social media post on X. “As President Trump has said: the end is near for these thugs.”

The United States has sought to topple the Cuban government since 1959, when Cuban revolutionaries ousted the U.S.-backed Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, a brutal dictator who transformed the Caribbean nation into what experts have called a “virtual slave state,” and at the behest of American companies.

The United States has maintained a decades-long embargo on Cuba and, in the past, pursued covert efforts to assassinate the country’s former leader, Fidel Castro. While all efforts to topple Cuba’s government thus far have failed, the recent U.S. attack and takeover of Venezuela – a major energy supplier to Cuba – a number of Republicans say they are more hopeful than ever that Havana’s government could fall.

It was Giménez’s blatant calls for American companies to take root across Cuba, however, that stunned critics online Friday.

“Not satire: A US Congressman and close Trump ally threatens to overthrow Cuba's revolutionary government so US corporations can colonize the country,” wrote journalist Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report, in a social media post on X Friday.

“When US imperialists say they wage war for ‘freedom,’ they mean this: McDonald's and Walmart. This is whom US politicians serve.”

Others, like Danny Valdes, a Cuban American and organizer with the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, came to a similar conclusion.

“After 65 years of strangling Cuba’s economy, they’re openly salivating over carving it up for Exxon, Walmart, and Airbnb,” Valdes wrote in a social media post on X Friday. “That’s not ‘freedom.’ It’s colonialism.”