Related videos:
The Cuban-American congressman Mario Díaz-Balart warned that the regime in Havana seems to have not understood the change in U.S. policy towards the island under the presidency of Donald Trump.
In a message posted on the social network X, the legislator stated that Cuban authorities continue to behave as if they are facing previous administrations in Washington.
“The regime in Cuba hasn’t realized that the President of the United States is no longer Joe Biden, nor Barack Obama, nor Bill Clinton, nor Jimmy Carter,” he wrote on his official account.
Díaz-Balart added that the current U.S. policy toward the Cuban regime is shaped by Trump's leadership and the role of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"The president is Donald Trump, accompanied by Secretary Marco Rubio, who has a deep understanding of the world and, particularly, this hemisphere, as well as the pattern of repression, persecution, and manipulation that characterizes that dictatorship," he stated in the same post.
"President Trump does not allow himself to be blackmailed," he concluded.
The congressman accompanied the message with a snippet from an interview given to journalist Alejandro Cao, in which he was asked about the case of ten Panamanian citizens detained in Cuba for alleged "subversive signs."
During the conversation, Díaz-Balart questioned the very concept used by Cuban authorities to justify the arrests.
"I have to laugh because the concept of subversive signs only exists in a dictatorship; only in a dictatorship are signs considered a matter of subversion," he stated.
In that same exchange, the legislator asserted that the regime would be trying to manipulate the situation or create confusion in Washington, but insisted that the current U.S. administration would not be pressured.
"The president of the United States is not Joe Biden, not Obama, not Clinton, not Carter; it is an individual named Donald Trump, with a secretary named Marco Rubio, who knows this hemisphere very well, understands the circumstances of this dictatorship, and will not be confused or blackmailed," he declared.
He also stated that there are no negotiations with Havana, despite reports of possible conversations circulating; “there have been reports of conversations, but those are not negotiations,” he said.
Statements are made in a context of increasing political pressure from Washington on the Cuban regime. Díaz-Balart has emphasized that the current U.S. administration is not willing to accept a dictatorship just a few miles from U.S. territory and has pointed out the presence of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean following the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, as he explained when referring to Trump's policy towards the Cuban regime and military presence in the region.
The congressman has also warned that if a violent repression against mass protests were to occur in Cuba, the U.S. president would not accept it, as he stated while discussing the protest scenario and Washington's response to a possible massacre of civilians on the island, as explained in his statements regarding a potential violent repression in Cuba.
In other recent statements, Díaz-Balart has maintained that the Cuban regime is experiencing one of its moments of greatest weakness and has advocated for maintaining political, economic, and diplomatic pressure to bring about changes in the system, in line with his warning that “the regime in Cuba has never been as weak”.
Filed under: