{"podcast":{"title":"The Intercept Briefing","slug":"the-intercept-briefing-951534","podcast_index_feed_id":951534,"rss_url":"https://rss.acast.com/intercepted-with-jeremy-scahill","website_url":"https://theintercept.com/podcasts","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/61b775cb169562bbade950d2/1760635288941-f6a6d5ae-4bcb-4b70-8ea6-88ec7090c7dc.jpeg","author":"The Intercept","episode_count":404,"summary":"Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a weekly podcast delivering news, incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-12T14:18:03.081390+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-intercept-briefing-951534"},"episode":{"title":"What Does the Trump Administration Want With Cuba?","slug":"what-does-the-trump-administration-want-with-cuba","published_at":"2026-02-20T10:30:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-intercept-briefing-951534/what-does-the-trump-administration-want-with-cuba","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-intercept-briefing-951534","url":"https://theintercept.com/2026/02/20/podcast-trump-cuba/","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/f5b64019-68c3-57d4-b70b-043e63e5cbf6/e/6997a0cb4a6b6137bfb120f5/media.mp3","summary":"Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold. The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes . As the U.S. hurtles toward war with Iran and further military action in the Middle East and continues to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Cuba is just the latest foreign policy arena where the Trump administration has further ensnared the U.S. This week on The Intercept Briefing, senior politics reporter Akela Lacy speaks with fellow reporter Jonah Valdez about how U.S. foreign policy is impacting the upcoming midterm elections and Valdez’s recent reporting on how a new anti-Zionist PAC has associated with influencers that have made statements that are outright antisemitic.  Lacy also speaks to University of Miami history professor Michael Bustamante and Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba specializing in post-1959 regime durability, about the crisis unfolding in Cuba. Missing from mainstream news coverage of Trump’s attacks on Cuba and U.S. efforts to impose regime change in the region is a recognition of how Trump’s policies fit into his attacks on immigrants in the U.S., Bustamante says. “One of the, I think, subtext of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it's not just about being able to plant the flag and say, ‘We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do,’” Bustamante says.    “It's also about, we can dep…","meta_description":"Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of t…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3536,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-intercept-briefing-951534/episodes/what-does-the-trump-administration-want-with-cuba/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-intercept-briefing-951534/what-does-the-trump-administration-want-with-cuba.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}