US President Donald Trump had barely arrived at the United Nations Tuesday when the mishaps began. First an escalator ground to a halt right as First Lady Melania Trump stepped onto it. Then, as the president took the stage to address delegates at the UN headquarters, he complained his teleprompter broke.
Trump seized on the two incidents to argue how poorly he’d been treated by the world body, complaining its leaders hadn’t helped him end the seven wars he’s repeatedly boasted about bringing to a close. It set the tone for an hour-long speech in which the president excoriated the entire institution, right down to the headquarters he’d sought to renovate decades ago.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations — a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter, thank you very much,” Trump said, adding that his administration never gets credit for its success, including global conflicts he’s intervened in attempting to solve. “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.”
The speech was emblematic of a president whose second-term policies and pronouncements have been bigger and more aggressive — and far more disruptive to the global economic order — than those he advanced his first four years in the White House.
Yet world leaders, deploying what’s become a template strategy for managing the emboldened American president, largely ignored most of his speech and stuck to their agendas on climate and trade. A rapid—fire series of meetings with world leaders through the day culminated in a widely-attended reception Tuesday night where Trump was set to hold court.
The verbal broadsides marked a remarkable shift from the US president who greeted the United Nations in 2017 with assurances countries should “work together in close harmony and unity” to create a better world, and that “in America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.”
“Your countries are going to hell,” Trump told the crowd this time around. “You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.”
The insults laden throughout the speech were a feature, not a bug. Later Tuesday, while at Trump Tower, the president reposted a social media reply calling it “savage” and a “necessary smack down.”
Although he questioned the role of the UN in his first term, Trump has now helped precipitate an existential crisis for the organization, as it grapples with an explosion of regional conflicts and increasing questions about its relevance. He’s slashed US foreign assistance and the US is now running more than $3 billion behind in paying its United Nations dues.
But just as Trump has taken a far more combative stance, world leaders who once seemed baffled by his performances came off as more adept about how to deal with him — and turn encounters with the US president into viral moments of their own. After Trump spoke and left the stage, General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock offered a quick point of order.
“Excellencies, as we are receiving queries, I would like to assure you that, don’t worry, the UN teleprompters are working perfectly,” she said.
Then there was French President Emmanuel Macron, the European leader who has shown his skill managing relations with the US president. As police barricaded streets in anticipation of Trump’s motorcade sweeping through Manhattan late Monday, it paralyzed the movement not just of city residents but Macron as well.
The French leader swiftly called Trump, according to a video shared by a reporter with Macron. “Guess what?” he said. “I’m waiting the street because everything is frozen for you.” Footage then showed Macron walking the streets of New York, and even getting a kiss on the forehead from an excited passerby.
Trump himself seemed to whipsaw between views that contradicted each other, offering more reasons for leaders not to take the bait. Less than an hour after blasting the UN as woefully ineffective, Trump met Secretary General Antonio Guterres and offered soft assurances that he backed the body. “I may disagree with it sometimes, but I am so behind it, because I think the potential for peace with this institution is so great,” Trump said.
Trump delivered a “scathing speech” marked by “America-first ideology” but also isn’t ready to quit the world body, said Stephen Schlesinger, a fellow with the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. “That contradiction is that at the same time he instinctively understands he has to be a part of the UN.”
The same applied to a meeting with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. For months, Trump has blasted Brazil’s prosecution of its former leader Jair Bolsonaro, while Lula made veiled jabs at Trump of his own, warning of “arbitrary sanctions and unilateral interventions.”
But on Tuesday, after a chance meeting offstage, Trump offered warm words for the Brazilian leader.
“He seemed like a very nice man, actually. He liked me, I liked him,” Trump said of Lula, adding that the two had agreed to meet. “At least for about 39 seconds we had excellent chemistry. It’s a good sign.”
UN officials also showed a willingness to adapt, quickly probing the incident after Trump’s escalator jibe. The initial report suggested a videographer traveling backward up the escalator may have accidentally triggered a built-in safety mechanism at the top that shut it down just as the Trumps were getting on, according to UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
“If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a social media post.
Yet even as world leaders suggested they had no choice but to navigate the order under Trump, they made clear they didn’t necessarily like it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney lamented the US decision to move away from the multilateral system to a more transactional approach.
“I’ll start by admitting up front that we prospered under the old system,” Carney told the audience. “We would like the old system back.”
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