Watch: Chaos Erupts At UN As Mike Waltz Gets Into Screaming Match With Cuban Diplomat, U.S. Staffer Allegedly Assaulted
Cuba's communist regime brought its confrontational tactics into the halls of the United Nations last week, triggering a heated showdown with U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz.
Waltz, a former Green Beret and President Donald Trump's envoy to the UN, had just wrapped up a forum exposing alleged human rights abuses under Havana's brutal government when Cuban Ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán and members of his delegation angerly confronted attendees, according to footage obtained by the New York Post.
The video appeared to show a member of the Cuban delegation assaulting Waltz spokesman J.P. Freire while attempting to snatch his cell phone as he filmed the heated arguement.
NEW: @USAmbUN Mike Waltz just got into a shouting match on the floor of the general assembly with Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla
"He's not going to intimidate me in the United States of America, like he tries to intimidate political prisoners," Waltz... pic.twitter.com/DgZZ4v8w7w— Josh Christenson (@jchristenson_) October 27, 2026
The confrontation, which occured on October 19, followed a U.S. Mission event titled "Free Cuba: The Oppression That Havana Hides," where dissidents, including artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer, recounted their experiences of imprisonment and forced labor under the Cuban government.
Cuban officials reportedly shouted "terrorists" and "liars" at the dissidents, while Soberón allegedly called Waltz a "liar" to his face.
Waltz fired back before reporters.
"I hope you...noted the so-called diplomats from the Cuban embassy here that we allow here by dint of treaty, harassing, yelling, intimidating, and filming not only our just released former political prisoners but others," the U.S. diplomat said.
The ambassador also took aim at Havana's annual campaign against U.S. sanctions at the General Assembly.
"Year after year, the Cuban regime comes to the General Assembly and propagates a lie through its annual resolution," Waltz said, adding that the government "uses excuse after excuse to justify its oppression, to justify the misery of the Cuban people."
Soberón fired back by accusing Washington of imposing "collective punishment" on Cubans, declaring that "the US is acting as an international delinquent."
The diplomatic confrontation came ahead of the UN's October 27-28 vote on Cuba's annual resolution condemning the decades-old U.S. embargo. The nonbinding measure has been adopted annually since 1992, except in 2020, when no vote was held