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Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, known as "Paquito de Cuba" and vice president of the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC), posted two messages on Saturday mocking President Donald Trump's threat to send an aircraft carrier to Cuban shores. However, the irony backfired when users found out that, at the time of writing, he was on a flight with American Airlines heading to Miami.
Everything started when Trump declared this morning at a private dinner in West Palm Beach, Florida, that the United States "will take control of Cuba almost immediately" after concluding military operations in Iran, describing a scenario in which the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln would approach to within just 91 meters of Cuba's shores to force the regime's surrender. That same day, Trump signed a new executive order expanding sanctions against Cuba.
Rodríguez Cruz responded with two posts on Facebook. In the first, he wrote: "Let him park his aircraft carrier 100 meters off the coast; we Cubans will cannibalize it and sell it for parts...". In the second, he added: "I'm on my way to Mar-A-Lago to tell him where he can stick his aircraft carrier...".
The problem was the selfie that accompanied the second post: the image shows the pro-government journalist at an airport, with a flight monitor visible in the background indicating flight AA 2706 from American Airlines heading to Miami, on the same date of May 2 at 11:47 AM.
In other words, the official who mocked Trump's military threat and boasted of revolutionary courage was, at that very moment, boarding a plane to the country he was supposedly challenging.
The contradiction sparked a torrent of criticism in the comments on both posts, where users pointed out the hypocrisy of a regime spokesman making anti-imperialist proclamations from the departure lounge of a flight to Miami.
It's not the first time that Paquito de Cuba has sparked outrage with such contradictions. In December 2025, he traveled to Venezuela and posted festive content while Cuba was going through a deep economic crisis, also claiming that Maduro was "winning the fight" against the United States.
In March 2025, he mocked the closure of Radio Martí by stating that Trump's policies increased "the unemployment rate among the ranks of the counter-revolution by 20%." And in July of that same year, he publicly claimed that inflation was decreasing, despite the prices that the Cuban population was facing.
Cuban state-run media also has a history of ridiculing American aircraft carriers: in February 2026, the state newspaper Girón described the USS Gerald R. Ford as a "facade of imperial power," and the newspaper Escambray echoed these jibes in March of that year, in a editorial line maintained by the regime in response to each escalation from Washington.
Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla stated that Cuba "will not be intimidated" by the threat of the aircraft carrier, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel asserted that "no aggressor" will subjugate the island. For his part, Yotuel Romero, co-author of "Patria y Vida," summarized Trump's words on Facebook with two words: "IT'S OVER".
Trump's statements are framed within a maximum pressure campaign that includes over 240 sanctions imposed since January 2025 and the re-inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism on January 20, 2026, a scenario in which Cuban Americans express fear and uncertainty about what may happen in the coming months.
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