As President Trump and first lady Melania Trump stepped onto an escalator at the United Nations building in New York City on Wednesday, it ground to a surprising halt. Trump and Melania looked around in bewilderment and then they began walking up instead.
The escalator was the first of three technical glitches that plagued the president’s visit.
The second occurred as Trump gave his hourlong address to the general assembly. “As I stood before a Television crowd of millions of people all over the World, and important Leaders in the Hall, my teleprompter didn’t work. It was stone cold dark,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“I immediately thought to myself, ‘Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’ I then proceeded to make a Speech without a teleprompter, which kicked in about 15 minutes later. The good news is the Speech has gotten fantastic reviews,” he said.
The third and final glitch Trump reported was an issue with the audio in the General Assembly Hall.
After making his speech — in which he critiqued the U.N. for many things, including their lack of help in making peace deals between other countries — Trump said he was told the sound was “completely off.” Unless world leaders ”used the interpreters’ earpieces, (they) couldn’t hear a thing."
Trump asked Melania how she thought he did on his speech, and she replied, “I couldn’t hear a word you said,” Trump said.
This is not a coincidence, Trump said. “This was triple sabotage at the U.N.”
The president has demanded an immediate investigation, and the Secret Service is involved, he concluded his Truth Social post.
The London Times reports U.N. workers joked about the escalator beforehand
Trump’s claims of sabotage may not be entirely inaccurate, according to the U.K.’s Sunday Times.
Several United Nations workers were overheard “joking” about stunts they could pull on the president to show him the organization needs more American dollars.
One idea they allegedly floated was “to turn off the escalators and lifts and simply tell Trump they ran out of money, so he had to walk up the stairs,” the Times reported.
Meanwhile, a U.N. spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said that a White House videographer may have triggered a safety mechanism.
“The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing,” Dujarric said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, on the other hand told Fox News on Tuesday night, “U.N. globalist staffers were basically plotting to set up the president of the United States.”
“And first it was the escalator, then it was the teleprompter, and then Katie Pavlich from Townhall … noticed that the audio inside of the room was much lower and different for the president of the United States than the previous speakers," she said.
“So when you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence to me... And if we find that these were U.N. staffers who were purposely trying to trip up, literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people, and I will personally see to it.”