Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report from Day 2 of UNGA, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the gathering in a speech that was part campaign address, part finger-wagging.
Here’s what’s on tap for the day: Trump airs his grievances at UNGA and announces a surprising about-face on Ukraine policy.
‘I’m Really Good at This Stuff’
Trump opened his speech at UNGA—his first address to the global gathering in five years—by complaining (somewhat jokingly) about a broken teleprompter. A few sentences later, he also mentioned the escalator he took up to the lectern that he said stopped halfway through. “These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” he quipped to scattered laughter.
From there, the complaints got more serious.
Trump expounded on his views of the U.N.’s ineffectiveness by repeating his frequent and disputed claim that he “ended seven unendable wars” around the world. “It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them,” he said, “and sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them.”
The U.S. president’s opening remarks largely trod familiar ground for anyone who has witnessed one of his many campaign speeches or White House press gaggles. He touted his administration’s achievements and slammed the “repeated set of disasters” that he said his predecessor, former U.S. President Joe Biden, oversaw. But he eventually settled on two major topics that he tried to hammer home.
The first was immigration. Trump’s first mention of another country by name came when he thanked El Salvador “for the successful and professional job they’ve done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.” Trump blamed the U.N. for its support to migrants, accusing the institution of “funding an assault on Western countries and their borders” and telling the 193 member states represented at the gathering that they all ought to follow the U.S. example and “do something about” immigration.
“I’m really good at this stuff,” he said. “Your countries are going to hell.”
‘No more cows.’ Trump’s second big theme was energy and the climate. He aired familiar grievances about renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar, saying they had led many European countries to “the brink of destruction.” He called on those countries to again emulate his administration by embracing fossil fuels.
Here, too, he railed against the U.N., listing multiple predictions from the 1980s by U.N. officials about the threat of climate change and global warming that he said didn’t come true. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people,” he said.
Trump also claimed, without evidence, that climate activists in the United States wanted to “kill all the cows” in the United States. “No more cows. We don’t want cows anymore,” he said.
On message. The one part of Trump’s speech that was more traditional and potentially heartening to most countries in the room was his description of the two major armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East that have dominated this week’s agenda at Turtle Bay.
“We have to stop the war in Gaza immediately,” he said. “We got to get the hostages back,” he added, referring to the nearly two dozen hostages still alive in Hamas captivity. (His call to “release the hostages now” was one of the few parts of the speech that received genuine—albeit scattered—applause, with most of the rest of it met with a stony silence.)
But Trump criticized the growing list of countries that have recognized a Palestinian state, describing the move as a “reward” to Hamas “for their atrocities.”
He also showed more evidence of his growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, saying the war was “not making Russia look good” and calling on European countries to “cease all energy purchases from Russia, otherwise we’re all wasting a lot of time.”
The aftermath. Even as Trump’s repeated criticism of the U.N. might have raised eyebrows and temperatures in the building, he stopped short of signaling a U.S. exit from the body it helped create. In fact, he told U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after his speech that “our country is behind the United Nations 100 percent.”
That ambiguity could give many countries a semantic lifeline, C.J. Pine, a former State Department official who spent five years in the U.S. mission to the U.N. until earlier this month, told SitRep. “Given [Trump] also didn’t concretely say things like pulling out of the U.N., I expect other states will try to appeal to positive rhetoric,” he said.
Elsewhere in the Building
Zelensky and Trump. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump met on the sidelines of UNGA on Tuesday. Subsequently, Trump posted on Truth Social that he believes Ukraine can win back all of its territory seized and occupied by Russia—marking a massive shift.
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump wrote.
Trump had previously (and repeatedly) suggested that Ukrainian forces would be unable to gain ground in occupied territories. “A big chunk of territory is taken and that territory has been taken,” Trump said in August.
During his meeting with Zelensky, Trump also said he thought NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace, which has been a growing problem lately.
At a press conference after the meeting, Zelensky told reporters that his conversation with Trump was “constructive” and that the president’s Truth Social post represented “a big shift.” Zelensky said that Trump—whom he referred to as a “game-changer”—knows “more details” about the situation on the battlefield than before, suggesting that the change in position from the U.S. president was a product of him gradually losing trust in Putin.
Hot Mic
SitRep caught up with Jarmo Sareva, the consul general of Finland in New York, on Tuesday on the sidelines of UNGA. Sareva has also served in various positions at the U.N. and was previously posted at the Finnish Embassy in Moscow.
When asked whether Trump and his “America First” approach to foreign policy poses a threat to the U.N.’s multilateral mission, Sareva said: “When people back home ask me or my colleagues, ‘So, what is happening in the U.S.? Where are things heading?’ I offer the word of caution, which is, ‘Don’t take everything literally.’ We are a pretty literally minded people.”
“In the U.S., there’s no business like show business, and you must take something with a grain of salt. Of course, we do hope that the U.S. will remain an anchor of the Western alliance,” Sareva said, noting that he was “heartened” when he heard U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz discuss the U.S. commitment to NATO yesterday.
Sareva said he often tells people back in Finland that they shouldn’t “necessarily look into what President Trump or some other political actors here say, look more into what they do, and in that sense, I should say that we shouldn’t be too alarmed.”
U.N. Tidbits
- Trump’s address was preceded by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the speaking order, which the U.S. president commented on toward the end of his speech. “I was walking in and the leader of Brazil was walking out. I saw him, he saw me, and we embraced,” Trump said, right after slamming da Silva’s government for “censorship” and “judicial corruption.” But Trump said he liked the Brazilian president personally, adding that they planned to meet next week. “At least for about 39 seconds, we had excellent chemistry,” he said.
- World leaders, they’re just like us! Even French President Emmanuel Macron couldn’t circumvent the NYPD barricades that SitRep has been navigating for the past two days. Luckily, he knows a guy. Macron immediately called Trump in a video that has now gone viral, reportedly saying: “Guess what—I’m waiting in the street because everything is frozen for you.”
What We’re Watching on Wednesday
9 a.m. UNGA’s general debate enters its second day, with addresses by Zelensky, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and Argentine President Javier Milei.
3 p.m. The U.N. Security Council holds a meeting on artificial intelligence.