Mike Waltz gets into shouting match with Cuban foreign minister on UN floor

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs to “back up!” as the two officials fell into a shouting match on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly.As Waltz was delivering a speech ridiculing the communist Cuban regime, the Cuban delegation began interrupting Waltz by shouting, banging on their table, and requesting a point of order from the official in charge of the meeting. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla subsequently rushed to the front of the room while yelling at Waltz, as the two then shouted at each other in front of the General Assembly meeting.“I hope everyone, Mr. President, is listening to the delegation right now,” Waltz said as the Cuban delegation began to disrupt him. “Imagine what happens when someone asks questions. 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.” The uproar from Cuba began when Walz was criticizing the foundation of Cuba’s communist regime under Fidel Castro. When Rodriguez Parrilla rushed to the front of the room and continued to make a point of order, Waltz insisted his request was invalid, saying he was only requesting a point of order because he “doesn’t like the substance of what he’s hearing.”“He’s not going to intimidate me in the United States of America, like he tries to intimidate political prisoners,” Walz said. “And I’m the representative of the United States of America. Back up!”After the confrontation ended with the Cuban delegation heading back to its designated section on the floor, Rodriguez Parrilla accused Walz of “lying” and “offending the dignity of the people and government of Cuba.”The flare-up on the U.N. General Assembly floor is the latest display of escalating tensions between the U.S. and the Cuban regime.The Trump administration’s pressure campaign on the communist regime has been a focal point of its foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere throughout 2026. In February, the administration initiated an oil blockade on the island, while President Donald Trump said he believed there could be a “friendly takeover” of the country’s communist regime as he was in talks with the government.At the end of September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the state of Cuba in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity after the island country’s power grid collapsed in mid-September. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Cuba has “already fallen” and that there cannot be “economic freedom in Cuba if you don’t have political freedom first.”RISING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PRESSURE ON CUBA DIVIDES HILL DEMOCRATS“It doesn’t have a functional economy and it’s governed by people who continue to preach about some revolution that has been dead for 20 years that’s never worked,” Rubio said.On Friday, Rubio made a direct appeal to the Cuban people, encouraging them to join a “discrete partnership” with the CIA if they want to see change in their country.