OAN Staff Sophia Flores
5:03 PM – Tuesday, September 23, 2025
As soon as President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump approached the escalator at the United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, it stopped working. However, the timing seemed highly suspicious — prompting White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to urge UN officials to investigate whether the malfunction was intentional.
Leavitt quickly took to X, calling for an investigation into the unusual “coincidence.” She stressed that anyone found responsible for the escalator incident should be fired from their position.
In her X post, Leavitt also attached a Times of London report stating that UN staffers had already joked prior to the event about staging certain “stunts” — such as “turning off the escalators” — in order to draw public attention to the $1 billion cut in U.S. funding to the UN.
However, as of September 2025, the United States still remains the largest financial contributor to the UN, providing approximately 22% of the UN’s regular budget. This equates to around $820 million of the $3.5 billion regular budget for the year. In addition to the regular budget, the United States also leads contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, accounting for approximately 27% of the peacekeeping budget, or about $6.5 billion of the $25 billion total for 2024–2025.
Trump highlighted the mishap during his speech to the UN General Assembly.
“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen,” the president stated. “But she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape. We both stood.”
The 47th president then addressed another mishap that took place during his speech to the UN Assembly.
“Then a teleprompter that didn’t work,” he added. “These are the two things I got from the United Nations — a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much. And by the way, it’s working now. Just went on. Thank you.”
A UN spokesperson later maintained that all of the UN “incidents” were accidents, and not meant to disrespect President Trump.
“Regarding the escalator: The safety mechanism was inadvertently triggered by someone who was ahead of the president on the escalator. The escalator was immediately reset and is in operation,” said Farhan Aziz Haq for the UN.
“Regarding the teleprompter, we have no comment since we don’t operate that teleprompter. The interpretation audio was heard when a non-official interpreter pressed the wrong button, which briefly allowed a non-UN interpreter to be heard,” he added.
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