U.S. President Donald Trump and first woman Melania Trump arrive for the eightieth session of the UN’s Common Meeting (UNGA) on Sept. 23, 2025 in New York Metropolis.
Alexi J. Rosenfeld | Getty Photos
White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned Tuesday that if anybody on the United Nations “deliberately” stopped an escalator earlier than President Donald Trump and First Woman Melania Trump stepped on it, “they should be fired and investigated instantly.”
Her menace got here hours after an escalator on the UN abruptly halted simply because the Trumps bought on it forward of his Common Meeting speech.
Leavitt in her submit highlighted a report from the British newspaper, The Occasions, which mentioned that UN workers members had reportedly joked about turning off the escalators and elevators throughout Trump’s go to to the group’s headquarters.
A UN official, nonetheless, mentioned earlier on Tuesday that an individual touring with Trump inadvertently hit the cease lever on the escalator, inflicting it to return to an abrupt halt, in response to the Related Press.
Trump pointed to the escalator mishap, along with a defective teleprompter, to gas his mockery of the United Nations’ headquarters, a constructing he as soon as sought to renovate.
“A few years in the past, a really profitable actual property developer in New York, often called Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complicated,” Trump instructed the GA throughout wide-ranging remarks that questioned the aim of the UN.
“I mentioned on the time that I’d do it for $500 million, rebuilding and the whole lot, it will be stunning,” Trump mentioned.
“I used to speak about, ‘I will provide you with marble flooring, they are going to provide you with terrazzo,'” he recalled. “‘I will provide the better of the whole lot, you are going to have mahogany partitions. They are going to provide you with plastic.'”
“I noticed that they didn’t know what they had been doing when it got here to development,” Trump mentioned.
He mentioned that the UN in the end determined to go in “one other path,” which was “way more costly on the time” and “produced a far inferior product.”
Trump started his speech studying from paper notes as a result of the teleprompter was not working.
“These are the 2 issues I bought from the United Nations: a foul escalator and a foul teleprompter,” Trump cracked.
The UN official additionally famous that the president’s group was chargeable for working the teleprompter, the AP reported.
In 2005, Trump requested a U.S. Senate committee to permit him to handle renovations of the UN, a request that was in the end denied.
In his speech to world leaders on Tuesday, Trump criticized their international group, accusing the UN of working with “empty phrases, and empty phrases do not remedy wars.”
“The UN has such super potential, I’ve all the time mentioned it,” Trump mentioned.
“It has such super, super potential, nevertheless it’s not even coming near residing as much as that potential,” he mentioned in his handle, which lasted almost an hour.
“All they appear to do is write a very strongly worded letter, after which by no means comply with that letter up; it is empty phrases,” he continued.
Trump’s speech got here as he has withdrawn america from plenty of totally different UN our bodies and slashed funding for the group.
Trump, who has lengthy been essential of the UN, mentioned its member nations “are being ruined” by immigration.
He additionally known as local weather change “a con job.”
Trump urged the UN to belief his imaginative and prescient for coverage, saying that he is “actually good at predicting issues.”
“Through the marketing campaign, that they had a hat. The most effective-selling hat, ‘Trump Was Proper About Every part,'” he recalled.
“And I do not say that in a braggadocious approach, nevertheless it’s true,” Trump mentioned.
