President Donald Trump on Tuesday used his first visit of his second term to the United Nations General Assembly to deliver a grievance-laden speech accusing the world body of offering nothing but “empty words” while warning European leaders that immigration posed an existential threat to their nations.
“Your countries are being ruined,” Trump told a hall filled with presidents, prime ministers and monarchs. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”
It was his clearest call yet for nations to adopt his own hard-line approach to migration, particularly targeting European countries whose more open-border policies he said were endangering their economies and cultures. “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed,” he said, referencing London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is Muslim. “Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
Trump’s remarks outlined a worldview that has come to define his second term: a rejection of globalism, support for closing national borders, and a belief that only his leadership can restore order. “I don’t say this in a braggadocious way,” he told the assembly, “but it’s true—I’ve been right about everything.”
Read more: Trump Says Recognition of Palestinian Statehood Encourages ‘Continued Conflict’
He extended his critique to the United Nations itself, claiming the organization was actively undermining the countries it was meant to serve. “The United Nations is funding an assault on Western countries and their borders,” he said. “The U.N. is supposed to stop invasions, not create them, and not finance them.”
Trump has long expressed his frustrations with multilateralism projected by the United Nations. Already in his first eight months in office, Trump has withheld up to $1 billion in funding for the U.N. and has withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, the Human Rights Council, and UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization. “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” he asked. “It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”
In one of many digressions, Trump complained that the body had rejected his bid two decades ago to renovate its headquarters. “I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I would have given you marble floors, mahogany walls. Instead you got plastic,” he said. “And you paid billions more. They still haven’t finished the job.” Later, he ridiculed a malfunctioning escalator and teleprompter.
The contrast was on display in the session’s opening moments, when Annalena Baerbock, the General Assembly’s president, urged delegates not to give in to despair about the institution’s shortcomings. “Sometimes we could’ve done more, but we cannot let this dishearten us,” she said. “If we stop doing the right things, evil will prevail.”
On policy, Trump lashed out at European nations for continuing to admit migrants and for investing in renewable energy, which he derided as a “green energy scam.” He warned of a “double-tailed monster” of immigration and climate policy that he said was destroying the continent. “I love the people of Europe, and I hate to see it being devastated,” he said. He went further still, calling climate change itself “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” dismissing the scientific consensus as a “hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”
He insisted that he had “ended seven wars” and suggested he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Prize,” he told the hall. “But for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless wars.”
However, his role in ending global conflicts has not been universally accepted. At a nearby event in New York City on Monday, President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo said fighting with Rwanda had continued despite a Trump-brokered accord, claiming there is a difference between “President Trump’s will and the situation actually happening in the field,” according to the Washington Post.
Still, Trump argued that his efforts contrasted sharply with those of the United Nations, which he mocked as incapable of acting beyond issuing “really strongly worded letters.”
“It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war,” he said. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”
The address also touched on two of the gravest conflicts confronting the assembly: the war in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Gaza, Trump criticized the mounting international campaign to recognize Palestinian statehood, which France and several other U.S. allies embraced this week. “The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists,” he said. “This would be a reward for these horrible atrocities, including Oct. 7.” He insisted instead on securing the release of Israeli hostages, saying, “We want them all back. We don’t want to get back two, then another two. We want them all.”
Turning to Ukraine, Trump berated European nations for continuing to buy Russian oil and gas. “Think of it: They’re funding the war against themselves,” he said. He warned that the United States was prepared to impose “a very strong round of powerful tariffs” on Moscow, but said Europe must “step it up” and “immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia.”
Trump proclaimed that America had entered a “Golden Age” of renewed strength. He extended “the hand of American leadership and friendship” to any nation willing to join him in “forging a safer, more prosperous world.”
The post At U.N., Trump Urges Europe to Halt Immigration and Demands Respect for His Vision: ‘Your Countries Are Being Ruined’ appeared first on TIME.
