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When President Donald Trump first climbed to the iconic diplomatic bully pulpit that is the United Nations’ General Assembly Hall in 2017, he was still a relatively new President and a surprise one at that. His nerves appeared to show as he began addressing a room of fellow world leaders. Much of that speech was littered with the same diplomatic dogma of Trump’s predecessors: a passing defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty, praise for global health initiatives like PEPFAR, and an eloquent defense of democracy.
“Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the systems, and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom since World War II,” Trump said eight years ago.
On Tuesday, Trump delivered his fifth speech to UNGA. The tone of humility and the invitations for collaboration were long gone. In its place were Trump’s dark worldview about the U.N. itself, and questionable boasts about his domestic poll numbers.
In 2017, Trump nudged the United Nations to undergo reforms to focus on outcomes and not processes. “The American people hope that one day soon the United Nations can be a much more accountable and effective advocate for human dignity and freedom around the world,” Trump said then.
Now? Trump was downright dismissive of the organization hosting him: “What is the purpose of the United Nations?”
With only passing mentions of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, Trump seemed pleased to treat the morning like a campaign rally with one of his most powerful audiences to date. Belligerent is not too strong a word to use to describe Trump’s tone Tuesday morning toward a room filled almost entirely with longstanding U.S. allies.
“I’m really good at this stuff,” Trump assured them. “Your countries are going to hell.”
Over the course of 56 meandering minutes, Trump nursed grievances large and small, with complaints that he had to walk up to the hall because the escalator was broken and barbs for Joe Biden aplenty. (By contrast, Trump did not utter Barack Obama’s name during his four previous addresses to the U.N. Assembly.)
The remarks, his longest ever to the global confab and going well beyond his allocated time, stood as a sharp reminder that Trump sees his turn on these stages as a chance for self-promotion. He cast the United Nations as a passive observer of global affairs that would be lost without him, as he continued his shameless campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize for ending, by his count, seven wars.
“Sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them,” Trump bemoaned. “All I got from the United Nations was an escalator on the way up that stopped right in the middle.”
During his first term, Trump largely stuck to the script, making statements that the Trump of today would likely disavow. “We have invested in better health and opportunity all over the world through programs like PEPFAR, which funds AIDS relief,” Trump touted in 2017, citing the heralded George W. Bush-era program that has, in Trump’s second term, seen its funding and effectiveness decimated.
For comparison, on Tuesday he spent time bragging about a military take-over of the streets of the U.S. capital, denigrating renewable energy, and mocking climate science. At times it seemed like Trump traded the word-masters of the national security establishment for a Bingo card of right-wing trolling. It was abundantly clear from Trump’s performance that he was playing to a domestic audience and not a global one, and it’s a shrinking one at that.
“I’m really good at predicting things,” Trump said, making a pitch for a phrase his campaign put on hats and other swag last year. “I’ve been right about everything.”
Trump drew some moments of laughter, including when he said he was physically fit enough to surmount that broken escalator and when he said he only does business with people he likes. It was similar to the mocking chuckle he drew in 2018 when he claimed he “accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”
But Trump was clear that he is not laughing with them on moments of substance. At one point, he gleefully boasted about the bombing of two boats in open waters that his administration says were carrying drugs—actions that critics from both parties have said were illegal.
“We will blow you out of existence,” he said.
It was a discomfiting preview of the next three years on the world stage. An emboldened Trump just made clear he has no intention of reviving diplomatic norms, giving American friends and foes alike more reason to fret. This was not the Trump who showed up in 2017 with an instinct to tread carefully.
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The post Trump’s Latest Speech to the U.N. General Assembly Sounded Very Different From His First appeared first on TIME.
