The Trump administration is kicking a Cuban diplomat out of the country after a heated confrontation on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz announced.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” Tuesday night, Waltz said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had signed the paperwork to expel the first secretary of Cuba’s U.N. delegation, who Waltz said shoved and tried to assault an American diplomat. Waltz said the diplomat would be on a plane to Havana within 24 hours.
The clash erupted during the General Assembly’s annual debate on the decades-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. Waltz, who served as Trump’s national security adviser before taking the U.N. post, used his speech to urge member nations to reject a resolution calling for an end to the restrictions. He described Cuba’s communist government as an illegitimate and brutal regime located just 90 miles from American shores, and argued its officials have enriched themselves at the expense of ordinary Cubans.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla interrupted with a point of order and approached the podium, claiming Waltz’s speech violated the assembly’s procedural rules. Rodríguez called the American ambassador uncivilized and crude and took a jab at the Signal chat controversy that preceded Waltz’s departure from the White House.
Waltz refused to back down.
“This is not your communist dictatorship,” Waltz shot back, telling Rodríguez he could not silence him or his colleagues. He called on U.N. officials to restore order and demanded that Rodríguez back away from the podium.
During the commotion, a member of the Cuban delegation was caught on video swatting at a phone held by Waltz’s spokesman, J.P. Freire, as he filmed the exchange. Waltz later posted footage online and accused Cuban “regime thugs” of rushing the stage, adding that one Cuban official tried to pressure U.N. staff into cutting his microphone.
The Washington Sun reported that the title Waltz described appears to match Richard Tur de la Concepción, listed as first secretary of Cuba’s permanent mission to the U.N. Waltz did not name the diplomat.
Havana pushed back. Cuban diplomat David Ramirez Alvarez called Waltz a disgrace to the diplomatic profession, and Cuba’s U.N. mission filed a complaint with the world body. Cuban officials had not publicly responded to the expulsion order as of Wednesday.
The White House weighed in with a cartoon of the showdown, captioned with a pointed message: “Not in the United States of America.”
The U.N. General Assembly was scheduled to vote Wednesday on the resolution condemning the U.S. embargo. The measure has passed overwhelmingly in past years, but the vote is nonbinding and cannot lift the embargo, which is set by U.S. law.
The incident marks the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s hard-line approach toward Havana, led in large part by Rubio, a Cuban American and longtime critic of the communist regime.
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