After his speech, Trump struck a conciliatory tone, telling UN Secretary General António Guterres the U.S. is "behind the UN 100%."
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Trump at UN: A bad escalator, a bad teleprompter and a chance 39-second meeting
UNITED NATIONS − President
Donald Trump went scorched earth in his speech to the 80th United Nations General Assembly, criticizing everything from the UN's faulty escalators to a lack of action by member nations to solve global wars.
Meanwhile, he touted what he described as his own record of bringing an end to seven wars and stopping the influx of undocumented immigrants into the U.S. − while railing against what he called the “
globalist immigration agenda.”
He also broke news - about running into Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on the way to his speech and making an impromptu decision to meet up next week after months of rancor between the two.
“I was walking in and the leader of Brazil was walking out. I saw him, he saw me," Trump said during his Sept. 23 speech. "We actually agreed that we would meet next week."
Relations between Brazil and the U.S. have been strained, with Trump repeatedly demanding that Brazil halt the prosecution
of former President Jair Bolsonaro on charges of attempting a coup in 2022. Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, was convicted earlier this month.
Brazil also has been on the receiving end of a punishing 50% U.S. reciprocal tariff.
But Trump's chance “39 seconds,” as he described it, with the Brazilian president, popularly known as Lula, may have changed things.
“We had excellent chemistry,” said Trump. “It’s a good sign.”
Here are more moments from Trump's UN visit:
Things got off to a rocky start when the president and first lady
Melania Trump got on a U.N. escalator. It stopped on the way up—"right in the middle,” said Trump. “If the first lady wasn't in great shape, she would've fallen. But she's in great shape. We're both in good shape,” he said. As he stood at the podium, the teleprompter stopped working.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations,” said Trump. “A bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much.” Before long, the teleprompter was back on, and Trump launched into the United Nation’s squandered potential. “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal,” Trump said, adding that he didn’t think too much of it at the time because I was “too busy working to save millions of lives.” “What is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential,” he said. “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words and empty words don't solve wars.” Trump followed up his criticism of the UN with a shout-out to himself.
Along with
the seven wars he says he ended − others disagree − Trump mentioned the Abraham Accords, a series of U.S.-brokered agreements that established diplomatic normalization between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority states in 2020. He said the US never received credit for it.
“Everyone says that 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 mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and unglorious wars,” said Trump.
Leaders of countries including Pakistan, Israel, Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have already nominated Trump for the coveted prize. Ever the real estate developer, Trump brought up an old grievance at not getting a contract to
refurbish the UN complex in New York.
“Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex,” said Trump.
Trump said his bid included marble floors, while other developers offered terrazzo, a composite material with marble and granite chips.
He said he wanted to give them the best of everything.
“You're going to have mahogany walls. They are going to give you plastic,” he said.
Alas, they went in another direction.
Trump said the project ultimately ran into massive cost overruns and delivered “an inferior product.”
The UN secretariat building "did not even get the marble floors that I promised them,” he told the audience. “You’re walking to terrazzo. Do you notice that? As far as I'm concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck on the escalator, they still haven't finished the job.”
Trump also took his fellow world leaders to task, insisting it was "time to end the failed experiment of open borders. "I'm really good at this stuff," he declared. "Your countries are going to hell."
The president then pressed European leaders in particular, claiming they were only allowing immigrants into their countries "to be nice."
"You want to be politically correct, and you’re destroying your heritage,” he said. “If you don’t stop people that you’ve never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail."
"I’m the president of the United States, but I worry about Europe. I love Europe, I love the people of Europe. And I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration, that double-tailed monster that destroys everything in its wake."
Trump also criticized his fellow leaders for buying into the "green scam" of global warming, calling it “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.”
Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the U.S. president said predictions about global warming causing a "global catastrophe" were wrong and “made by stupid people,” adding, “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail."
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