Ted Cruz slams Biden’s UN ambassador, tells her to “defend America” and stop appeasing “brutal tyrants”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) denounced U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield for attempting to “kiss up to the brutal tyrants” on the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday.

Cruz tweeted his disapproval in reaction to a video clip of Thomas-Greenfield addressing the virtual 30th Annual Summit of the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Al Sharpton. Thomas-Greenfield maintained that “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy” into the “founding documents and principles” of the U.S. while vowing that the country would regain a seat on the Human Rights Council.

“Perhaps our ambassadors should defend America,” Cruz tweeted in response. “And not kiss up to the brutal tyrants (including Cuba, Venezuela, Russia & China) on the UN Human Rights Council.”

The U.S. last held on a seat on the council in 2018, when the administration of former President Donald Trump withdrew from the council while claiming that it was “biased” and alleging issues like the mistreatment of Israel. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the council was “a protector of human rights abusers.”

During her speech on Wednesday, Thomas-Greenfield said that acknowledging the “imperfect union” of the U.S. was a necessary component of raising “issues of equity and justice at the global scale” and rejoining the council, which the government re-engaged with weeks after President Joe Biden took office.

“Under President Biden’s leadership, we’ve been restoring our alliances and recommitting to multilateral institutions,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “We immediately re-engaged with the Human Rights Council and have announced our intention to seek election to that body, so that we can advance our most-cherished democratic values around the globe.”

“Of course, when we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale, we have to approach them with humility,” she added. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union – and have been since the beginning – and every day we strive to make ourselves more perfect, and more just.”

Thomas-Greenfield, who is Black, said that white supremacy was responsible for the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and “many other Black Americans.” She recounted delivering a speech featuring her personal and family experiences to the UN General Assembly in March, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

In the speech, Thomas-Greenfield traced her ancestry to those kept in slavery, saying that her great-grandmother was born “the child of a slave just three generations back from me.” She also recalled her upbringing in the segregated South, where she was bussed to a segregated school and the Ku Klux Klan “burned crosses on lawns in our neighborhood” on the weekends.

“I shared these stories and others to acknowledge, on the international stage, that I have personally experienced one of America’s greatest imperfections,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”

“But I also shared these stories to offer up an insight, a simple truth I’ve learned over the years: Racism is not the problem of the person who experiences it,” she added. “Racism is the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist. And in today’s world, that is every society.”

Newsweek reached out to the United States Mission to the United Nations for comment.