NBC News Continues to Run Cuban Regime Propaganda

Jorge Bonilla
March 17th, 2026 9:09 PM

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After a second night of airing a bizarre report that played more like a public relations piece, it is clear that NBC News has given themselves to running pro-Cuban regime propaganda. The latest report seeks to make the United States the villain responsible for the effects of the ongoing energy embargo upon the prison island’s healthcare system.

Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, March 17th, 2026:

KRISTEN WELKER: And tonight, a rare look inside a Cuban hospital as doctors struggle to treat patients amid a power and energy crisis there. Our George Solis is the first journalist given access to a hospital in Cuba in more than a decade.

GEORGE SOLIS: Yonelkis Polo García is fighting for her life at this hospital in Havana. The mother of two young boys has leukemia. Administering what most places is routine cancer treatments is almost impossible here. 

YONELKIS POLO GARCÍA: I live in “El Cotorro”...

SOLIS: García lives about 20 miles away from the hospital, too far to walk. She tells me without fuel or affordable transportation, life has gotten harder. 

POLO GARCÍA: It becomes more difficult for me…

SOLIS: We're fighting every day, she says. My biggest fear is going to bed and not waking up next morning. 

This is a supply room where all of the medicine is stored, but power can go out for up to 8 hours at a time, which is enough to make the refrigerated medication spoil. They’ve had to come up with other ways to keep it cold. 

You try to save it.

DOCTOR: Of course.

SOLIS: Doctors say across the country people are dying because of the fuel crisis. So far, they tell me, this hospital has been lucky. (Unintelligible name)’s 11-year-old son got here today in an ambulance. She says she feels grateful for that because transportation is so scarce.  

Ambulances not on the road are in places just like this one. Some broken, some in need of repair. Others, just in need of gas that’s so hard to come by. 

In fact, 300 ambulances are sitting idle. There are only 25 being used for the entire country, all electric. Everywhere you turn, Cubans are suffering. The streets have been dark, and homes dangerously hot. Garbage is piling up on every street corner. 

Carlos Montes de Oca says he tries to stay calm, but it's overwhelming. The stress gets to you, you could have a heart attack, he says. Families huddle around in the dark. 

WOMAN: And that is unfortunate…

SOLIS: It makes you want to cry, Yezabel Garcia tells me. They feel devastated. 

Patience is running thin as these power outages affect every aspect of life here, from keeping food cold to getting clean water. It is a huge challenge for all of these families. Kristen.

WELKER: George Solis, thank you.

The first thing that sticks out is the quality of the hospital, which is par for the course for Cuban regime propaganda. They walked Solis into the Ritz-Carlton of regime hospitals; with such luxuries not available to everyday Cubans as medications, a functioning bed, linens, and apparent janitorial services. 

THIS is what everyday Cubans actually get from their much-ballyhooed universal healthcare system:

Neither Cuba’s healthcare system nor electrical grids were decimated by a two-and-a-half-month energy embargo. These, like everything else in Cuba, are the end result of 67 years of a Communist dictatorship that destroyed the country. Garbage was piling up in Old Havana well before the energy embargo, usually right next to rubble from a crumbling building.

NBC can try to make you forget that all they want. Once again, they abstained from using such terms as: Castro, dictator, dictatorship, communism, Communist Party, socialism, regime, and protests. Honest reporting about the situation in Cuba would include these terms. Instead NBC, which is normally the best among the three over-the-air network evening newscasts, has descended into cheap propaganda that will not save this dying regime.

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