PROPAGANDA: Trump-Deranged ABC Gives Aid and Comfort to the Castro Regime

Jorge Bonilla
May 3rd, 2026 3:54 PM

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The Elitist Media continue to provide aid and comfort to Cuba’s communist regime ahead of a potential action by the United States. This time, it’s Trump-deranged ABC News performing crisis communications for a brutal regime on its last legs.

Watch as correspondent Matt Rivers whitewashes the regime, hypes its May Day anti-American march, and propagates the idea that the energy embargo is the source of Cuba’s ills (click "expand" to view transcript):

MATT RIVERS: Just after dawn along the Malecón, Havana's famed coastal highway filled with Cubans all marching, all headed toward the same place.

So that building right there is the U.S. Embassy here in Havana. And today, the Cuban government is surging hundreds of thousands of people right past its front door with a clear message: the Cuban government is not backing down. 

It was an anti-imperialist March, says the government, in the face of a U.S. administration more determined than ever to topple the government that's ruled this country for nearly seventy years.

DONALD TRUMP: Cuba is a failing nation, and we're going to do this, and we may stop by Cuba after we're finished with this.

RIVERS: The Trump administration has explicitly not taken military action off the table to achieve that goal, but announced new sanctions on Cuban leadership Friday, increasing pressure on them to step down. Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, calling those new sanctions “collective punishment on the Cuban people.”

MARCO RUBIO: Those serious economic reforms are impossible with these people in charge. It can't happen. And these people in charge aren't just economically incompetent. They have rolled out the welcome mat to adversaries of the United States to operate within Cuban territory against our national interest, with impunity.

RIVERS: But for now, the pressure campaign has focused on one main thing: oil. A U.S. Embargo wiped out nearly 60% of Cuba's oil import supply in a matter of days. Now, in Havana, as night falls, the lights often don't come on. 

The only lights on on the street right now are the ones that are powered by batteries. And this is the new norm. There's not a single neighborhood in all of the city of Havana that has not been affected by these blackouts. And the longer this country goes without getting enough oil, the worse this gets. 

Upstairs from the street, mom Idania cooks on a propane stove- hamburger, rice and beans by flashlight. Yet again, that's most nights here.

IDANIA IN SPANISH: Everything’s a crisis.

RIVERS: It's a crisis, she says. It's incredibly stressful. There's no schedule to eat, to cook. You can't plan your life. It's horrible. After dinner, it's homework by flashlight. Lantern in one hand, pencil in the other. Daylight in Havana reveals more challenges. The smell of rotting trash wafting through the streets. 

With no gas to run the trash trucks, there's piles of trash like this all over the city, not just in poorer places, but also right here. That building is the Ministry of Tourism.

The tight shot suggests that this was a massive protest, but it was not. A handful of protesters marched across tight streets so as to create the appearance of mass participation in support of the presence of Cuba’s real ruler Raúl Castro. Actual video of the march differs from what Rivers laid out for ABC viewers.

Furthermore, this was not an organic protest. The marchers were overwhelmingly government workers. And, as independent journalist Jorge Mag Castro reports, they were bused in via the state-run transportation system.

Rivers mentions none of this. Instead, he recycles regime propaganda depicting difficulties in hospitals, poor families cooking and doing homework under a flashlight due to ongoing blackouts, and hot garbage along Havana’s streets as being the result of the American oil embargo as opposed to the REAL reason Cuba is a disaster- 67 years of brutal communist malfeasance and misrule. 

On the bright side, if there is one to be found here, Rivers did at least utter “communism” towards the end of the report. Other than that, ABC’s viewers were treated to a stream of communist propaganda to close out the show. Par for the course for the Trump-deranged Elitist Media.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, May 3rd, 2026:

DONALD TRUMP: Cuba’s got problems. We'll finish one first. I like to finish a job.  (VIDEO SWIPE) On the way back from Iran, we'll have one of our big- maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world. We'll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore and they'll say, “Thank you very much. We give up.”

MARTHA RADDATZ: President Trump on Friday saying he'll target Cuba after Iran. Cuba's president responding, quote, “no aggressor, no matter how powerful, will find surrender in Cuba.” Despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the Trump administration has kept up its push for regime change in Cuba, with a strict oil embargo leaving the island nation's economy devastated. ABC's Matt Rivers is on the ground in Havana.

MATT RIVERS: Just after dawn along the Malecón, Havana's famed coastal highway filled with Cubans all marching, all headed toward the same place.

So that building right there is the U.S. Embassy here in Havana. And today, the Cuban government is surging hundreds of thousands of people right past its front door with a clear message: the Cuban government is not backing down. 

It was an anti-imperialist March, says the government, in the face of a U.S. administration more determined than ever to topple the government that's ruled this country for nearly seventy years.

TRUMP: Cuba is a failing nation, and we're going to do this, and we may stop by Cuba after we're finished with this.

RIVERS: The Trump administration has explicitly not taken military action off the table to achieve that goal, but announced new sanctions on Cuban leadership Friday, increasing pressure on them to step down. Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, calling those new sanctions “collective punishment on the Cuban people.”

MARCO RUBIO: Those serious economic reforms are impossible with these people in charge. It can't happen. And these people in charge aren't just economically incompetent. They have rolled out the welcome mat to adversaries of the United States to operate within Cuban territory against our national interest, with impunity.

RIVERS: But for now, the pressure campaign has focused on one main thing: oil. A U.S. Embargo wiped out nearly 60% of Cuba's oil import supply in a matter of days. Now, in Havana, as night falls, the lights often don't come on. 

The only lights on on the street right now are the ones that are powered by batteries. And this is the new norm. There's not a single neighborhood in all of the city of Havana that has not been affected by these blackouts. And the longer this country goes without getting enough oil, the worse this gets. 

Upstairs from the street, mom Idania cooks on a propane stove- hamburger, rice and beans by flashlight. Yet again, that's most nights here.

IDANIA IN SPANISH: Everything’s a crisis.

RIVERS: It's a crisis, she says. It's incredibly stressful. There's no schedule to eat, to cook. You can't plan your life. It's horrible. After dinner, it's homework by flashlight. Lantern in one hand, pencil in the other. Daylight in Havana reveals more challenges. The smell of rotting trash wafting through the streets. 

With no gas to run the trash trucks, there's piles of trash like this all over the city, not just in poorer places, but also right here. That building is the Ministry of Tourism. Hospitals forced to scale back operations, dimming lights to conserve power. Air conditioning only in critical areas. Pediatrician Maria Elena Meza says many of her colleagues can't even get to work because of the lack of gas. We asked how she was feeling. 

MARIA ELENA MEZA, IN SPANISH: It’s a little difficult…

RIVERS: It's hard to keep back the tears, she says. It's a little difficult. But no matter what, I'll be here because it's what I do. Havana's famous fleet of classic cars now also sit idle. A single gallon of gasoline costs forty dollars here, and tourists have all but stopped coming. 

Many drivers we spoke to today have had no clients at all, and they say it's been that way for months, ever since the oil stopped flowing into the country. But when we asked them to talk about that reality on camera, everybody said no for fear of government retribution.

And that is a sign that for all the economic hardship, for all the pressure from the U.S., the communist government is still firmly in control, unofficially still led by this man, 94-year-old Raul Castro. Fidel's brother. Sat front and center at that march just in front of the U.S. Embassy. 

Martha, the U.S. government argues that the Cuban government itself is responsible for a lot of the suffering that you just saw there in our piece. They say that this government here is inefficient, it is corrupt, and that the people are inept stewards of whatever is left of the economy here. They say that it is time for this government, in its current form, to come to an end. Meanwhile, though it is ordinary Cubans caught up in the crossfire, Martha.

RADDATZ: Our thanks to Matt Rivers. We’ll be right back.

 

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