President floats a 'friendly takeover of Cuba' on the way to Marine One.

OK. Hon. Pay attention. The President of the United States, on the South Lawn of the White House, on a Friday afternoon, on his way to Marine One, on his way to Texas, paused to talk to reporters and said, quote, the United States could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba.

A friendly takeover. Of Cuba. On the South Lawn. On the way to the helicopter.

Buddy. I have been in real estate. I have been at deals. I have negotiated the purchase of a bar in Cherry Hill. You do not call a takeover of a foreign sovereign nation a friendly takeover. Friendly takeovers are what one company does to another company when the smaller company asks the bigger company to please buy it. Cuba, last I checked, is not a company. Cuba is a country. Cuba has a government. Cuba has eleven million people. Cuba has its own constitution and its own flag and its own UN seat.

The premise of the friendly takeover is that the Cuban government is talking with the United States. The secondary reporting, by Drop Site News, says there are no high-level negotiations between the two governments. The Miami Herald, on the same day, reported that the U.S. side has been talking to Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who is the grandson of Raúl Castro. The grandson is not a senior leader of the Cuban Communist Party. He is, by all available accounts, a private citizen with a famous last name.

So. Hon. The friendly takeover of Cuba is, on the real record, the administration talking to one private citizen who happens to be the grandson of a retired figure in the previous government. The president of the United States, on Friday, promoted this conversation to the level of the conversation that happens before a takeover. The grandson, as far as I know, has no authority to negotiate the handover of anything. The grandson is a guy.

What is also happening, in the same week, is that the administration is blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba. Targeting Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil company, and threatening tariffs on countries that break the blockade. The blockade is real. The blockade is causing the fuel shortage the administration is now invoking as evidence the takeover is friendly.

Buddy. That. That is the con. Squeeze the country until it cracks. Then point to the cracks. Then say they are talking to us. Then walk to the helicopter. Then say friendly takeover.

I have run a casino floor. I have seen this con. The con, in the casino, is called the grease and the squeeze. You grease the table with one hand and squeeze the wallet with the other and you say the gentleman is having fun.

You ever notice how the people who say they are non-interventionists somehow keep intervening.

Funny how that works.