Donald Trump has used one of the most important foreign policy speeches of his presidency to complain at the United Nations about a broken teleprompter, a faulty elevator and his failed bid to renovate the group’s headquarters.
In a landmark address at the UN General Assembly in New York, the president also took aim at the global organization for not playing a role in ending seven wars for which he says he has brokered peace.
“I never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help,” he told the world leaders who gathered on Tuesday morning to watch the president speak.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”
The speech was the first time Trump had addressed the UN General Assembly in six years, and took place against the backdrop of wars raging in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan.
But things got off to a tense start the moment the president took the stage to learn he had to read from prepared notes.
“I can only say whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” he said, drawing awkward laughs from the audience.
Within minutes, Trump also lamented that the elevator he and First Lady Melania Trump used en route to the general assembly hall had stopped while they were on it.
“If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape,” he said. “We’re both in good shape.”
He then meandered into a bizarre rant about his failed bid to renovate the UN headquarters when he was a real estate developer years before he became president.
“I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything beautiful,” he told the room.
“I used to talk about: I’m going to give you marble floors; they’re going to give you terrazzo… You’re going to have mahogany walls; they’re going to give you plastic. But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time, and which actually produced far more inferior product.”
Trump has long been skeptical of the UN, portraying it as ineffective, biased and wasteful.
Throughout his presidency, he has argued that the body spends too much money with little to show for it, and has pulled out of UN-backed frameworks like the Paris Climate Agreement and the Global Compact of Migration.
Tuesday’s address was a further tilt away from the global agency and a chance to tout his America First agenda.
Speaking for over an hour, Trump talked up America as “the hottest country in the world”, claiming that grocery prices were “down”, that inflation had been “defeated” and that manufacturing “was booming”.
This comes despite the latest reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve showing that manufacturing jobs have slowed, with grocery prices rising and inflation remaining elevated.
Trump also talked up his role in “ending seven un-endable wars”, although some of the nations he mentioned, such as the Congo, remain in conflict, while other countries such as India and Pakistan, have played down the role Trump has played.
“Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements, but for me the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with their fathers and mothers,” he said.
The president also slammed the UN for funding what he said was the biggest political problem of our time: uncontrolled migration.
“Your countries are going to hell,″ Trump told them.
With the war in Gaza front and center over the next few days at the UN, Trump also took aim at several of America’s allies for backing a two-state solution, arguing that it serves as a “reward” to Hamas.
“This could have been solved so long ago, but instead of giving into Hamas ransom demands, those who want peace should be united with one message, release the hostages now,” he said.
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