NBC aired a snippet from an interview with Cuba’s figurehead “President” Miguel Díaz-Canel on Thursday night in which he claimed that he will not resign amid calls from the United States for him to step down and for the rogue communist regime to reach a deal with the U.S.
Díaz-Canel spoke with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in Havana on Thursday, marking the first time NBC has interviewed a Castro regime official since its 1959 interview with late communist dictator Fidel Castro, and the first time the figurehead “President” has spoken with an American broadcast network. NBC aired a roughly five minute-long clip, with the full interview scheduled to air on Sunday.
The interview occurs at a time when the dysfunctional Cuban communist regime — which plunged Cuba into a state of abject misery through 67 years’ worth of disastrous communist policies — finds itself facing an extremely complex situation after the United States arrested Venezuela’s deposed socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro on January 3.
Maduro was one of the Cuban regime’s most crucial benefactors and helped sustain its Cuban allies through constant shipments of virtually free oil in exchange for personal security and assistance in helping sustain his regime in Venezuela.
Last month, Díaz-Canel personally confirmed that representatives from the Cuban regime have engaged have engaged in “sensible” talks with U.S. government officials, finally acknowledging said talks after President Donald Trump had repeatedly made mention of them over the past weeks. Days later, Díaz-Canel acknowledged that Cuba’s true dictator, nonagenarian Raúl Castro, is actively involved in the talks.
Asked by Welker if he would be willing to step down to if it meant “saving Cuba,” Díaz-Canel rejected the notion under the assertion that “stepping down is not part of our vocabulary.”
“In Cuba, the people who are in leadership positions are not elected by the U.S. government, and they don’t have a mandate from the U.S. government,” Díaz-Canel said. “We have a free sovereign state, a free state. We have self-determination and independence, and we are not subjected to the designs of the United States.”
Throughout the interview snippet, the figurehead “president” claimed that he was “elected” to the position of president — when it reality, the Cuban communist regime is a one-party system that does not allow for the existence of any kind of opposition party — and Raúl Castro, who assumed the position after his brother Fidel passed away in 2016, is the true dictator of Cuba.
Referring to President Trump’s recent statements on the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, Díaz-Canel said he is “not afraid” and that he is “willing to give my life for the revolution.”
He also said:
Of course, I wouldn’t like that to be the attitude of the U.S. government. I think the American people are sensitive people, and they wouldn’t allow, or they wouldn’t see with good eyes that their government, the country, would invade a very small island that does not pose any concern in terms of national security for the United States.
A White House official, in response to Díaz-Canel’s comments, reportedly told NBC that the Trump administration is talking to Cuba, whose leaders want to make a deal and should make a deal, which Trump believes “would be very easily made.”
“Cuba is a failing nation whose rulers have had a major setback with the loss of support from Venezuela,” the White House official said.
Díaz-Canel’s interview with NBC comes days after the figurehead “president” held an interview with Newsweek. It also occurs days after Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) disclosed that they visited Havana over the Easter holiday, meeting with Díaz-Canel and expressing their support for greater engagement with the Cuban communist regime, which for nearly seven decades has brutally oppressed its own people.
“The illegal U.S. blockade of fuel to Cuba… adds to the longest embargo in world history and is causing untold suffering to the Cuban people,” Reps. Jayapal and Jackson wrote, accusing Trump of “cruel collective punishment — effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country — that has produced permanent damage,” without making any mention of the decades’ worth of widely documented human rights atrocities committed by the Castro regime against the Cuban people.
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