US President Donald Trump and Mrs. Melania Trump will arrive at the 80th UN General Assembly (UNGA) session on September 23, 2025 in New York City.
Alexi J. Rosenfeld | Getty Images
White House press chief Caroline Leavitt said Tuesday that if someone from the UN “deliberately” stops the escalator just before President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump step into it, “they will be fired immediately and need to be investigated.”
Leavitt’s demand for X comes hours after the sudden halt of the UN escalator, just before Trump gave a speech to the New York General Assembly.
Leavitt’s tweet referenced a report from the British newspaper The Times.
Sunday’s paper said that in order to mark Trump’s arrival, UN staff joked that they might turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they’ve run out of money, so he’ll have to walk up the stairs.”
“If someone from the UN intentionally stops the escalator while the president and first lady are intervening, they will be fired immediately and need to be investigated,” the spokesperson wrote.
But earlier Tuesday, UN officials said that someone traveling with Trump inadvertently hit the escalator stop lever and suddenly stopped, the Associated Press reported.
Trump said he mentioned the accident and false teleprompter that caused him to laugh at the quality of the UN headquarters.
Trump began reading speeches from paper because the teleprompter was not working.
“As a very successful real estate developer in New York known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on renovation and rebuilding this highly UN complex,” Trump told GA in a speech.
“At the time I said I’d do that with $500 million, rebuilding, everything. It would be beautiful,” Trump said.
“I was talking about ‘I’m going to give you a marble floor, they’re going to give you a terrazzo,” he recalled. “I’m going to give you all the best, you’ll have a wall of mahogany. They’re going to give you plastic.”
“I realized that when it comes to construction, I don’t know what they were doing,” Trump said.
He said the UN ultimately decided to go in a “a different direction.” This was “more expensive at the time” and “produced much inferior products.
“These are two things I got from the United Nations: bad escalators and bad teleprompters,” Trump cracked.
Speaking to the Associated Press, UN officials pointed out that the president’s team is responsible for running the Teleprompte.
In 2005, Trump asked the U.S. Senate committee to allow it to administer the U.N. renovation, a request that was ultimately denied.
In a speech to world leaders on Tuesday, Trump criticized their global organisations and denounced the United Nations for their work that “the words of the sky and the words of the sky will not solve war.”
“There’s a huge potential for the United Nations,” I always said,” Trump said.
“It has incredibly incredible and incredible potential, but it doesn’t even bring you close to living with it,” he said in his speech.
“All they seem to be doing is writing a really strong and verbal letter and never lasts that letter. That’s empty words,” he continued.
Trump’s speech came when he withdraws the United States from many different UN agencies and cuts funding for the organization.
Trump, a long-time critic of the United Nations, said his member states have been “smashed down” by immigration.
He also called climate change “the job of fraud.”
Trump urged the UN to trust his vision for policy, saying he “is really good at predicting things.”
“They had hats during the campaign. The bestselling hat, “Trump was right about everything,” he recalled.
“And I’m not saying that in a way that boasts, but that’s true,” Trump said.
