Diplomats struggle to hide their anger at Donald Trump's UN speech
The US President launched scathing attacks on several countries
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump’s provocative address to the UN General Assembly had ambassadors squirming in their seats as the US President refused to hold back on attacking America’s enemies.
Mr Trump went on a rambling crusade against a number of states, including North Korea, Iran and Venezuela - prompting awkward responses from delegates.
Some representatives even refused to listen to the speech; North Korea’s UN ambassador walked out before Mr Trump arrived, leaving a more junior diplomat to represent the country.
The delegate that remained refused to look at Mr Trump, instead staring furiously into his lap and appearing to scribble on a notepad as the US President referred to the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, as "rocket man" and said: “No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the wellbeing of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea”.
The billionaire businessman added: “It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans and for the imprisonment, torture, killing and oppression of countless more.”
Mr Trump also turned his anger on Iran, whose UN ambassador raised his eyebrows and glared as the US President described the Middle Eastern country as a “corrupt dictatorship”.
“The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy,” Mr Trump said. “It has turned a wealthy country, with a rich history and culture, into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violent, bloodshed and chaos.
“It is time for the entire world to join us in demanding that Iran's government end its pursuit of death and destruction.”
Mr Trump also condemned Venezuela, where violent clashes have followed economic collapse and attempts by the country’s President, Nicolas Maduro, to gain greater control of the parliament.
The South American state’s representatives sat stony-faced as the US President said: “The socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of that country.
“This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation -- prosperous nation, by imposing a failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried. To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own people, stealing power from their elected representatives, to preserve his disastrous rule. The Venezuelan people are starving and their country is collapsing.”
However, the response to the speech was not entirely negative.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be seen nodding and applauding as Mr Trump praised “peaceful” Israel and slammed the nuclear deal with Iran made by his predecessor, Barack Obama, as “an embarrassment” and “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into”.
Saudi Arabia is also likely to have been cheered by Mr Trump’s criticism of Iran, given the two countries are locked in a proxy conflict for control in the Middle East.
Some commentators also pointed out that the US President had failed to mention the Saudis’ own questionable record on human rights.
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