A shouting match erupted on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly Hall on Tuesday as U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz publicly laid into Cuba’s communist government amid pressure on Washington to lift its economic embargo on the struggling island nation.
Waltz was speaking from the stage, calling the government a regime of thugs that steals from its people, when Cuba’s delegates, shouting and banging a desk in opposition, rose and approached the podium in protest, video shows.
“Imagine what happens when someone asks these questions in Havana, not in a room full of ambassadors and cameras. Imagine what happens to those people if this is the intimidation and disruption that we see,” Waltz said as Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez approached, shouting and calling him a liar.
“This is America, my friend! This is the United Nations. This isn’t your communist dictatorship. You cannot silence me, and you cannot silence my colleagues!” Waltz shouted back as the floor president called for order.
“This individual needs to back away from this podium. He’s not going to intimidate me in the United States of America,” Waltz went on. “You understand who you’re dealing with? This is America. Back up.”
Once allowed to resume, Waltz held up photos of what he said were Cuban leaders wearing multiple luxury watches, including Rolexes, and their family members lavishly vacationing in Europe and the Mediterranean as examples of where the Cuban people’s assets and humanitarian resources have gone.
“It’s not just watches, colleagues; it’s also a vast real estate empire,” he said, before holding up photos of multiple properties, including a private island, purportedly owned by the family of Cuba’s political Castro dynasty.
“Somehow, as the Cuban people are sitting in the dark, all of these luxury homes have power,” he said. “How is that? And why is that?”
Despite Waltz’s efforts, the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to condemn the U.S.’ economic embargo of Cuba, as it has for the last 34 years. There was slightly more opposition in the vote than in past years, however, and more countries also opted to sit out.
Waltz, hours after Tuesday’s drama, said that one of the Cuban diplomats whom he said “laid hands on an American diplomat” was ordered to be deported by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Video shared by Waltz appears to show a man repeatedly swatting at a phone as it recorded Waltz speaking on the stage. Waltz said the man, whom he identified as a Cuban diplomat, was trying to intimidate one of his American diplomats.
A State Department spokesman confirmed to HuffPost that one of Cuba’s diplomats was asked to leave.
“We have made clear to the Cuba Mission that this individual is not welcome in the United States, and as a result this individual has left,” they said in a statement. “Members of the incompetent communist Cuban regime showed their true essence through their intimidation and oppression tactics. Those tactics will not work, nor will they be tolerated.”