President Donald Trump made informal yet politically significant comments about Cuba this Tuesday during the second summit of the "Shield of the Americas" held at the UN headquarters in New York, where he praised his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, as the man who holds the key to understanding the situation on the island.
"What can I say about Cuba? They had another blackout last night. They don't have enough for the lights. I don't know what's happening in Cuba, but it doesn't look very good," Trump said to the leaders gathered at the summit, in a casual tone that did not hide the seriousness of the diagnosis.
The leader took the moment to refer to Rubio's family background: "Marco's parents were born in Cuba, second generation. He wants to decipher all of that, right Marco? He wants to know exactly what is there. I think he has already figured it out."
The joke went further: Trump suggested that someone could “drop” Rubio in the middle of Cuba on the way back from Iran, aboard an aircraft carrier, so he could “figure out the rest.”
He ended the comment with a direct compliment: "Your parents were born there, and now look at the position you hold, Secretary of State, doing a fantastic job."
These comments were made hours after Trump, in his speech before the 81st General Assembly of the UN, described Cuba as a “completely failed state” and predicted that it would “fall.”
The Cuban delegation, led by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, left the room in protest during that speech.
Trump also stated before the General Assembly that Rubio "is carrying out negotiations" with Havana, something that the Cuban Foreign Minister has flatly rejected, labeling the statements of the U.S. president as "falsehoods and slanders". Rodríguez Parrilla has insisted that "there have been no negotiations, nor are there any agreements or roadmaps."
The mention of Trump regarding the Cuban blackouts is not empty rhetoric: Cuba has experienced at least eight total collapses of the National Electric System so far in 2026, the most recent one occurring just days ago, between September 18 and 19.
The island's economy will contract by 10.3% this year according to CEPAL, the worst decline in Latin America, with blackouts reaching up to 22 hours a day.
The Summit of the Shield of the Americas, which Trump described as "the largest and most powerful alliance for economic and national security ever convened in the Western Hemisphere," gathered this Tuesday leaders such as Javier Milei (Argentina), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), Luis Abinader (Dominican Republic), Santiago Peña (Paraguay), and Rodrigo Chaves (Costa Rica), among others. Mexico and Colombia were not invited, despite being the countries historically most involved in the fight against regional drug trafficking.
The Trump administration has imposed more than two dozen sanctions against Cuba since January 2026, including measures targeting the military sector and nickel announced on September 17.
Rubio, the first Cuban-American to hold the position of Secretary of State and the son of immigrants who left the island in 1956, has been the main architect of that maximum pressure policy.
The Chancellor Rodríguez Parrilla is scheduled to speak before the General Assembly on September 26 to provide the official response of the Cuban regime to Trump's statements.
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