Cuba Is Collapsing. Will Trump Invade?
6/17/20261 hr 8 min
In this episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts on Trump’s new Iran deal and how it affects the future of the Republican Party and J. D. Vance’s presidential aspirations. David discusses the predicament that Vance finds himself in as the administration’s most vocal Iran War skeptic.
Then, David is joined by CNN’s Patrick Oppmann, who has been reporting from Cuba since 2012. Patrick and David discuss the current state of the country, the pressure that the Trump administration is putting on the ruling regime, and whether or not America will invade Cuba.
Finally, David ends the episode with a discussion of Shakespeare’s “Othello” and how ancient plays can emancipate readers from some of their modern prejudices.
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First 90 secondsKarla Lavey0:00
I'm Karla Lavey, cookbook author and snack enthusiast. Do you have a sweet tooth? Check out Sweets Unwrapped, a podcast from Ferrero and Atlantic Rethink, The Atlantic's creative marketing studio. Together, we're celebrating the traditions that make life sweet. Tune in now.
David Frum· Host0:17
[ on-hold music] Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Patrick Oppmann, the CNN Bureau Chief in Havana, and we will be talking about the horrific energy and economic crisis on the island of Cuba. My literary discussion this week will be the play Othello, and I'll be offering some thoughts on how ancient plays can emancipate us from some of our modern prejudices. But before either the dialogue or the literary discussion, some opening thoughts on the news of a, a looming and a p- apparent agreement, a ceasefire, maybe some kind of deal between the United States and Iran. I'm not going to talk about the specifics of that deal, which remain a little murky as I record this program. I want to talk instead about one of the characters who's coming out of this war, possibly a big winner and possibly a big loser, and that is Vice President J.D. Vance. Now, Vance has played the Ira- Iran war very much with an eye to his future political career. He talks more to the press than many people do in the, in the Trump administration, where a lot of people