WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump drew laughter less than one minute into his speech Tuesday to the United Nations General Assembly after his teleprompter stopped working.
“I can only say that whoever’s operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” Trump said.
That remark turned into a motif throughout his hour-long address, full of criticism of the U.N.’s effectiveness — from its handling of issues like mass migration to its escalator, which he said broke when he rode it that morning.
Trump said, erroneously, he has ended “seven unendable wars” since the start of his second term, the Israel-Iran conflict among them. He then said the U.N. should have done more to help.
“All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up,” he said. “It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”
For most of the address, which went well beyond the allotted 15 minutes, Trump boasted about the United States’ economic achievements while pointing out what he said were the shortcomings of other nations.
He pushed other countries to restrict immigration and green energy, which he called a “double-tailed monster.”
Trump criticized his predecessors when speaking about both subjects.
He said millions of illegal immigrants entered the U.S. through the southern border during the “incompetent” Biden administration.
And he encouraged other nations to enact border control policies as he has.
“I’m really good at this stuff,” Trump said. “Your countries are going to hell.”
When speaking about climate change, he called renewable energy a “green scam” that hurts economies. He said the U.N.’s global warming projections were “made by stupid people.”
He also invoked former President Barack Obama.
“He’d get in and he’d fly from Washington to Hawaii to play a round of golf,” Trump said. “And then he’d get back onto that big beautiful plane and he’d fly back and he would again talk about global warming and the carbon footprint. It’s a con job.”
Alice Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, said during a CFR media briefing following Trump’s speech that she was surprised he doubled down against global warming.
“He is just ignoring what’s happening in the rest of the world and proving that the United States has gone off into a far corner on climate change that, really, no one else is interested in joining,” Hill said.
Among the few other nations he mentioned in his speech, Trump praised Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who spoke before him.
Trump said he and Lula have arranged to meet next week. Still, he said Brazil is “doing poorly” and needs to work with the U.S. to succeed.
CFR senior fellow Edward Alden said at the media briefing that Trump’s primary focus on his own country contrasts with the multilateral collaboration of the U.N.
“There is a coherence to his worldview that I think we have to take seriously,” Alden said. “To me, the really interesting thing in the context of the United Nations is, are other nations going to buy any of this?”
Trump said the U.S. is prepared to help nations that need it. But he was less charitable toward the U.N.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations — a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” Trump said.
