Cuba’s Díaz-Canel spars with NBC’s Welker over question about stepping down
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As Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel sparred with NBC News’ Kristen Welker in an interview Thursday, the “Meet the Press” host questioned whether he would be “willing to resign if it meant saving Cuba.”
“You are a very important journalist,” Díaz-Canel responded through an interpreter. “Have you asked this question of any other president in the world?”
Welker noted that his resignation was one of the conditions put forward by the United States in diplomatic negotiations with the island country.
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Cuba’s leader Miguel Díaz-Canel spoke with NBC’s Kristen Welker on April 6, 2026. (Adalberto Roque/Pool/AFP via Getty Images; Shannon Finney/NBC via Getty Images)
When Díaz-Canel repeated his question, Welker said, “I asked our own president very difficult questions.”
He then asked, “Are you asking Trump that question?” he asked.
While Welker stated that he asked tough questions to President Donald Trump, Díaz-Canel asked, “Is this a question coming from you, or is it coming from the US government’s Department of State?”
The NBC News anchor asked again and reiterated that political change in Cuba was one of the conditions put forward by the U.S. government.
“People in leadership positions in Cuba are not elected by the US government and do not have authority from the US government,” Díaz-Canel said. he said. “We have a free sovereign state, a free state. We have self-determination and independence, and we are not subject to the designs of the United States.”
“We are elected by the people, but there is a narrative that tries to ignore that,” he told Welker. “Before any of us can be part of a leadership role, we have to be elected from the grassroots level in a constituency by thousands of Cubans. And then those who represent Cubans in the National Assembly of People Power, as in many other countries around the world, elect these leadership positions and these offices.”
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Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel gestures during the second plenary session of the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 6, 2025. (Pablo Porciuncula/AFP)
Cuba operates under a one-party socialist framework that prohibits the existence of organized political opposition. Although local elections are held to fill the National Assembly, the requirement that all candidates be members of the Communist Party leads human rights groups and political analysts to dismiss the process as there is no real opposition.
The country’s leader said the United States had no right to “demand anything from Cuba.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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President Donald Trump hosted a group of New York Times reporters in the Oval Office on January 7, 2026, for an hours-long interview. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
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Díaz-Canel said in March that the country was in talks with the Trump administration. A broadcast by Cuban state media said the talks with Washington were aimed at finding a solution to political differences dividing the communist island and the United States.
