An escalator and teleprompter outage, along with suspiciously timed jokes from United Nations officials, have led to questions of whether the staff at the international body attempted to sabotage President Donald Trump’s speech to world leaders.
Just seconds after the president climbed aboard the escalator at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday, the mechanism abruptly stopped working. The president and first lady, Melania Trump, were forced to walk up the stairs before he gave his speech at the General Assembly.
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This inconvenience was followed by another, the teleprompter, which seemed to have been working perfectly fine just seconds earlier for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, cut out.
“All I got from the U.N. was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle and a teleprompter that didn’t work,” Trump joked during his speech, eliciting some laughs from the audience.
He further quipped: “If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape.”
The United Nations disputed any responsibility for the mishaps, claiming it was all the fault of Trump’s team.
A U.N. official told the Washington Examiner that the intergovernmental body had nothing to do with the escalator or the teleprompter. They asserted that a Trump staff member tripped the stop mechanism on the escalator, and the U.S. delegation was handling the teleprompter.
But allegations of sabotage began to percolate after a weekend report in British outlet The Times resurfaced in which U.N. officials joked about pulling such a prank.
“U.N. organisers have been joking about stunts they could pull to highlight the funding shortage. One idea doing the rounds: turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they ran out of money, so he has to walk up the stairs,” the Times reported on Sunday.
U.S. officials were not amused. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the report via social media on Tuesday afternoon, noting its publication date before the incident.
“If someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately,” she wrote.
The 80th General Assembly has been plagued with countless technical issues since it began on Monday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s audio feed cut out midway through his speech yesterday, prompting the English-language translator to inform listeners she could not hear anything and apologize repeatedly.
Canadian President Mark Carney reaffirmed recognition of the State of Palestine on the same day. Following a burst of applause, his audio feed cut out.
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Following Trump’s teleprompter woes on Tuesday, King Abdullah II of Jordan took the stage to offer his own address and suffered similar issues.
“Security will only come when Palestine and Israel begin to coexist,” Abdullah said before abruptly stopping and shuffling his papers.
“It seems I have the same problem as President Trump,” he said before continuing his speech.
The Washington Examiner has contacted the White House for comment on who operated the teleprompter during the president’s speech and on the president’s reaction to the U.N. officials’ claims.
Trump’s speech before the General Assembly mixed harsh condemnations with affirmations of affection as he lobbied for European allies to abandon policies that are “destroying a large part of the free world.”
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The president claimed that the “failed experiment of open borders” and the “green energy scam” are chief among those policies.
“This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer. You’re doing it because you want to be nice,” he told the audience. “You want to be politically correct, and you’re destroying your heritage.”