President Trump told reporters on Sunday evening that Cuba wants to make a deal with the U.S.
“Cuba also wants to make a deal. And I think we will pretty soon make a deal or do whatever we have to do,” Trump said while traveling to Washington on Air Force One.
“We have a lot of great people that happened to vote for Trump, not that that matters. We have a lot of great people from Cuba that were violently and viciously thrown out of the country and worse, their families were killed,” he continued.
“So, we’re talking to Cuba, but we’re going to do Iran before Cuba,” he said.
Cuban President Manuel Díaz-Canel on Friday confirmed that his government is holding talks with the Trump administration to address “bilateral differences” and identify “areas of cooperation.”
In January, Trump imposed a U.S. quarantine against fuel imports to the island, halting Venezuelan energy deliveries to the country after deposing former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise military operation. Maduro was transferred to the U.S. to stand trial for drug charges.
“There are international factors that have facilitated these exchanges,” Díaz-Canel said in his remarks, according to a social media post by Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
Díaz-Canel noted that the objective of the talk is to “determine the willingness of both parties” to take concrete actions, the Cuban president continued, to identify areas of cooperation “to address shared threats and ensure the secure of both nations.”
