Following the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) newly unsealed indictment against former Cuban leader Raul Castro and several co-defendants over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down, EJ Haust, official guest host of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, said the case highlights growing pressure on Cuba’s communist regime and renewed American attention on the island nation.
Speaking during Friday’s edition of the show, Haust argued that President Donald Trump’s recent sanctions on Cuba reflect a tougher U.S. posture toward the regime.
“Earlier this month, Trump and the U.S. put more sanctions on Cuba,” Haust said. “There’s humanitarian issues there. We’ve kinda known that for a long time.”
She criticized former President Barack Obama for normalizing relations with Cuba during his administration.
“If you recall, it was President Obama that went to Cuba and made nicey-nice with Raul Castro and went to a baseball game with him, chumming up, eating hot dogs,” Haust said. “Everybody was like, ‘What are you doing? He’s a terrible dictator.’”
She also mocked celebrity praise for Cuba during the Obama years.
“Obama’s BFFs, Beyonce and Jay-Z, went down there and came back and said, ‘It’s so quaint. It’s like going back in time,’” Haust said. “Yeah, that’s not the flex you think it is.”
Haust noted how many Cubans remain trapped under severe economic and political conditions.
“The people there would very much like to be in and of the times, current times,” she said. “They don’t wanna live in the past.”
“They are held down,” Haust continued. “Financially, it’s awful. Politically, you can’t speak out.”
Haust also argued that Cuba presents a national security concern because of its close ties to Russia and its location near the U.S. She added that while aboard a Caribbean cruise, she heard reports of Russian submarines operating near Cuban waters.
“There is a national security component to all of this also,” she said. “Because if you recall, Russia had spy ships there not that long ago.”
“I was actually on a cruise in the Caribbean when they said that submarines, Russian submarines, were going through that area and to and from Cuba,” Haust added.
Regarding speculation about what a post-communist Cuba could look like economically if relations with the U.S. fundamentally changed, Haust pointed to the success of Cuban-American communities in South Florida as evidence of the Cuban people’s entrepreneurial potential.
“The Cuban people are really terrific by and large,” she said. “They love America. They love our culture.”
She also emphasized what she sees as Cuba’s untapped economic opportunities.
“There’s such great opportunity for innovation and economic development there,” Haust said.
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https://t.co/g7NsT4WjQF— Michael Patrick Leahy (@michaelpleahy) May 22, 2026
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Raul Castro” by United Nations Photo. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
