Maxine Waters Confronts Bessent On Cuba: “Why Are You Being So Cruel?”
September 19, 2026
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) confronted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week over his role in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” Cuba strategy.
“You cut off all the oil to Cuba," she said. “You’re starving the families, you’re starving the children.”
Since May, Bessent’s Treasury has sanctioned Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company, fuel distributors and entities that import equipment needed to keep the island’s energy sector running.
“You don’t have to be cruel,” she told Bessent.
Watch Rep. Waters’s full remarks.
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Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister:
“The policy of the United States is to produce collective punishment, to use the pain of each and every Cuban to try to achieve a political goal.”
“This has a human face. And the main problem is that it is not collateral damage. It is the aim of the policy.”
Amna Nawaz, PBS NewsHour Anchor:
“This month, the foreign minister of Cuba said that there are no talks happening between the U.S. and Cuba, but that the Cuban government would continue reaching out to its contacts. Is that happening? Is that part of why you're here in Washington?”
Carlos Fernández de Cossío:
“We've had several contacts and meetings with the U.S. What we claim is that they had no progress. And we say that because you only have to look at the fact that practically every week or every ten days or 15 days, there's a new announcement by the U.S. government of sanctions and coercive measures that punish the people of Cuba.”
“So you could not claim that there is progress in any dialogue or any type of communication if hostility continues to happen. And that's our main point.”
“But we continue to be ready to engage with the United States when they are ready to try to solve our political differences, our bilateral political differences, which are many.”
Amna Nawaz:
“The White House has said that the Cuban regime aligns itself with nations hostile to the U.S., that Cuba maintains close ties to other state sponsors of terrorism. What is your response to those claims?”
Carlos Fernández de Cossío:
“Most of the countries that the U.S. claims that Cuba is close to, the United States has a more comprehensive and broader relationship with those countries than Cuba does.”
Amna Nawaz:
“We're talking about nations like Russia, Iran—”
Carlos Fernández de Cossío:
“The U.S. has a much broader relationship with China, at least, and with Russia than we do, with trade, with exchanges of different types than we do.”
Amna Nawaz:
“It is an adversarial relationship with Russia, though. We would not call—”
Carlos Fernández de Cossío:
“But we have more trade still today with Russia than we do, more contacts, more high-level meetings and visits than they have with Cuba.”
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