President Trump called for arrests to be made related to an escalator at the United Nations headquarters that abruptly stopped working as soon as he and first lady Melania Trump stepped onto it Tuesday.
The sudden escalator outage, which nearly caused the first lady to fall over, was one of at least three snafus Trump, 79, noticed while he was in the building to address world leaders and diplomats at the UN General Assembly in New York.
“A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday — Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday.
“First, the escalator going up to the Main Speaking Floor came to a screeching halt. It stopped on a dime. It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster,” the president continued.
Trump argued the escalator incident was “absolutely sabotage,” pointing to a Times of London report that UN staffers had been overheard joking that they might switch off the escalator and make Trump walk to the hall to give his speech.
“The people that did it should be arrested!” the president fumed.
A UN spokesperson suggested a member of Trump’s entourage may be to blame for the stalling of the escalator.
“In an effort to document their arrival, a videographer from the US delegation stepped on to the escalator ahead of the President and First Lady,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said in a statement. “As the videographer, who was traveling backwards up the escalator reached the top , the First Lady, followed by President Trump, each mounted the steps at the bottom. At that moment (9:50am), the escalator came to a stop.”
“A subsequent investigation, including a readout of the machine’s central processing unit, indicated that the escalator had stopped after a built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the escalator,” Dujarric added. “The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing.”
“The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”
Trump demanded an “immediate investigation” into the incident and said “all security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button.”
“The Secret Service is involved,” the president noted.
Trump’s teleprompter also stopped working as he delivered his speech, and the president claims his remarks couldn’t be heard by anyone in the auditorium not wearing an earpiece.
“It was stone cold dark,” Trump said of the teleprompter. “I immediately thought to myself, ;Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’”
The president said the teleprompter “kicked in about 15 minutes later.”
Trump said he learned of the audio issue at the end of his speech, when he asked Melania, “How did I do?”
“And she said, ‘I couldn’t hear a word you said,’” the president said.
“This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
The UN did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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