President Donald Trump once again invoked the electoral support of Cuban Americans on Monday to justify his maximum pressure policy towards Cuba, during a press conference at the White House where he also labeled the island a "failed nation" and suggested he might "pass through Cuba" at some point in the near future.
The statements emerged in response to a question from reporters about an apparent contradiction in his stance: Trump had promised to sanction countries that supplied fuel to Cuba, but at the end of March he stated that "if a country wants to send some oil to Cuba, I have no problem with that," referring to the Russian tanker Anatoli Kolodkin, which arrived in Matanzas with 730,000 barrels of crude.
"Cuba has been a terribly mismanaged country for a long time. It has a bad system. It has been very oppressive," Trump stated to reporters.
The leader added that he has "many great Cuban-Americans, almost all of whom voted for me", and described the suffering of that community: "They have been treated very poorly. In many cases, family members have been murdered. They have been beaten and assaulted; terrible things have happened in Cuba."
Trump also issued a warning with an ambiguous tone: "We are going to do this. And we might go through Cuba after we finish this. But Cuba is a nation that has been horribly governed for many years by Castro".
The Cuban-American support that Trump refers to is backed by concrete data. In the November 2024 elections, 58% of Cuban-Americans voted for him, being the only Hispanic demographic group with a Republican majority. In Miami-Dade, that support reached 68% according to data from Florida International University, a figure described as a historic high.
However, in 2026, cracks have emerged in that support. The revocation of the legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans under temporary parole programs, along with mass deportations and immigration raids, has led to expressions of discontent within the community itself.
This is not what we voted for, it is unacceptable and inhumane, stated Ilena García, founder of 'Latinas for Trump', in March.
Trump's policy towards Cuba since January 2026 has been characterized by sustained escalation. On January 29, he signed Executive Order 14380, which declared Cuba an extraordinary threat and imposed tariffs on countries that supplied it with oil.
The capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. special forces on January 3 eliminated between 80 and 90% of Cuban oil imports from Venezuela.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been explicit about the conditions for any agreement: "The government system in Cuba has to change".
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