For four decades, a U.S.-financed broadcaster provoked the ire of the communist government in Cuba. President Trump dismantled it in a matter of days.
Journalists from Radio Martí, the U.S. federally-funded news outlet aimed at communist Cuba, were in the middle of interviewing a Cuban activist in Miami on a recent Saturday when bleak looks suddenly came over their faces.
The 40-year-old news agency, designed to send uncensored news in Spanish into Cuba, had just been ordered closed by the Trump administration, the crew learned in an email. The profile of the activist — Ramón Saúl Sánchez, known for leading protest flotillas to Cuba — was scrapped.
“They were very confused,” Mr. Sánchez said. “They said, ‘We think we’ve been terminated. We need to leave.’”
President Trump did in a flash what the Castro brothers in Cuba couldn’t do in four decades: he took a news station that had long drawn the communist regime’s fury off the air.
Radio Martí became the latest in dozens of programs and agencies in the U.S. government to fall to the massive cost-cutting carried out by Mr. Trump and his adviser, Elon Musk.