Trump's quip about sending warship to take Cuba struck a nerve on the island

Nora Gámez Torres, Miami Herald on May 4, 2026

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Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel ramped up his rhetoric this weekend, calling the current U.S. administration “fascist,” after President Donald Trump suggested, apparently in jest, that he could send a U.S. aircraft carrier “on its way back from Iran” and easily take the island.

While recognizing attendees at an event in Palm Beach Friday evening, Trump said that one guest, architect Rick Gonzalez, was from “a place called Cuba, which we will be taking over almost immediately. Cuba’s got problems,” he said. He then added, “We’ll finish one first. I like to finish a job,” apparently referring to the war in Iran.

Amid laughs from the audience, he continued: “What we’ll do — on the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big — maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world. We’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore. And they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up.’”

Cuban officials, however, did not think Trump, who more than once has threatened that Cuba would be “next” in his list of military incursions, was joking.

On Saturday morning, Díaz-Canel said “the U.S. President is escalating his threats of military aggression against Cuba to a dangerous and unprecedented level,” adding that “no aggressor — however powerful — will find surrender in Cuba.” Cuban officials rarely directly mention President Trump on their regular comments about U.S. imperialism.

Cuba’s foreign affairs minister, Bruno Rodriguez, also referred to Trump’s remarks on X as a dangerous escalation, especially on the heels of a new executive order the president signed Friday toughening the U.S. embargo and going after foreign firms and banks doing business with Cuba, which will now risk U.S. sanctions.

“The new, clear, and direct threat of military aggression issued by the U.S. President— following a drastic tightening of the economic blockade — escalates the aggression against Cuba to dangerous levels, with no pretext other than the desire to appease tiny elites who pledge their electoral and financial loyalty to him,” Rodriguez said in a post on X.

On Saturday, in a speech to foreign activists that traveled to the island to join the May Day celebrations, Rodriguez cited Trump’s remarks Friday and said defiantly: “Cuba would be a hornet’s nest; Cuba would be a death trap; Cuba would be the theater of a ‘war of the entire people’ if U.S. imperialism dared to attack us.”

Attempting a joke of his own, he then asked rhetorically what Cubans could do with a U.S. destroyer so near its shores: “Today, Cubans are also saying that it could be a dance floor.”

Speaking in the same event, Díaz-Canel said Cuba was taking U.S. military threats seriously but Cubans had no fear.

“There is the imminent threat of military aggression,” he said. “And that is not something we want or desire. Cuba is a country of peace. Cuba champions peace. Yet the government of the United States speaks of war every day, speaks of threats every day, and every day escalates its threatening rhetoric toward Cuba; but the Cuban people are not afraid.

“And the current government of the United States is a fascist government,” he added. “That is why genocidal acts are being committed around the world.”

The chance of a deal between the two countries seems to be fizzling following talks in Havana last month in which U.S. officials laid out terms that the Cuban government so far has not accepted, including major economic and political reforms and the release of political prisoners. In response, Trump on Friday signed an executive order that could be catastrophic for the island’s economy, already in desperate need of a drastic overhaul and foreign investments.

Díaz-Canel blasted the latest round of U.S. sanctions as “collective punishment” and a policy of “total asphyxiation” seeking regime change, saying it risks destabilizing the region.

He then asked, “How long will the world continue to tolerate this abuse?”

On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro chimed on X: “I do not agree with military aggression against Cuba, because that constitutes military aggression against Latin America. We declared that the Caribbean is a zone of peace, and that must be respected.

“The Cuban people are the sole owners of their country,” he added. “The American continent will live in peace if no one seeks to impose themselves upon others. This continent is the continent of liberty, not of invasions.”

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