Dan Negrea, the U.S. alternate representative to the General Assembly, stood up and left a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday after France used its speaking time to attack the Trump administration's human rights record. He didn't make a scene. He didn't slam the table. He just walked out.
Then France made it worse.
The French U.N. Mission posted on social media: "The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated." That's France's official diplomatic position — that the United States of America belongs in the same sentence as North Korea.
The walkout came after a vote on Friday, July 25, in the General Assembly over the reelection of Volker Turk as U.N. high commissioner for human rights. The United States was among 10 countries that voted against Turk's extension. France voted in favor. Then, at Monday's Security Council session focused on the Russia-Ukraine war — now in its fourth year — France pivoted from the actual agenda to lecture the American delegation.
Negrea wasn't having it. "There is a member of this council that will feign moral outrage and pretend to lecture the rest of us about every topic," Negrea said. "That is why we walked out during France's intervention."
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz backed the move. "It is disappointing — though not surprising — that this is how France deflects on its shameful vote to coddle some of the worst human rights abusers," Waltz said, as reported by RedState.
France voted to extend the term of a human rights commissioner whose office has spent more time scolding democracies over immigration policy than confronting actual authoritarian regimes. That's the vote France is defending. And when the U.S. objected, France's response was to compare us to Kim Jong Un's hermit kingdom.
Ten countries voted against Turk. The French positioned that as America standing alone against the world. But grouping the U.S. with North Korea because both voted the same way on a single U.N. resolution is the kind of argument that sounds devastating on social media and falls apart the second you think about it for more than three seconds.
There was a time — not long ago — when American diplomats would have sat through that kind of performance, smiled politely, and issued a carefully worded statement three days later through a press secretary nobody watches. The statement would use phrases like "we respectfully disagree with our French allies" and accomplish nothing.
Negrea got up and left the room. Waltz called France's vote shameful by name. No apology tour. No "our allies have legitimate concerns." Just a flat rejection of the premise that the United States needs permission from Paris to set its own foreign policy.
When your rebuttal to being called a grandstander is to compare the United States to North Korea, you're not making the argument you think you're making.
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