US diplomats walk out of UN Security Council meet after France criticizes Trump administration
US diplomats walked out as their French counterparts were speaking at the United Nations today after Washington’s close European ally criticized the Trump administration’s human rights record.
The surprise move during a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine followed US opposition to giving UN human rights chief Volker Türk another four-year term. The reappointment on Friday got overwhelming support, including from France.
The US walkout reflects not only the more strained relations between President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, but also wider tensions between the US and Europe. These include questions over Trump’s commitment to NATO, possible changes to US troop deployments in Europe, and Trump’s desire to control Greenland, which belongs to NATO member Denmark.
Trump has complained that Europeans, who weren’t consulted, did not help the US during the Iran war. Amid the tensions, Macron has taken a lead in trying to build up Europe’s military and ensure a nuclear umbrella as one of the continent’s two nuclear powers, along with Britain.
After the brief walkout, deputy US ambassador Dan Negrea accuses France of feigning “moral outrage” and pretending to lecture the world about every topic, including human rights.
The United States has stood by France in every conflict where its “freedom has been imperiled” and tolerated its grandstanding “out of a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect,” he says, but no more.
What sparked the walkout was a social media post Friday from France’s UN Mission in Geneva criticizing US opposition to a second term for the UN rights chief. The General Assembly voted 144-10 with 13 abstentions in support of Türk, with the US among the “no” votes.
“The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it,” the French Mission tweeted.
Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, in responding on X, accused France of coddling ”some of the worst human rights abusers” and voting “for someone who has been lecturing free, sovereign democracies like the United States, the UK, and Israel, while cozying up to the world’s worst oppressors.”