THE AMERICA ONE NEWS
Sep 23, 2025  |  
0
 | Remer,MN
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge.
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge and Reasoning Support for Fantasy Sports and Betting Enthusiasts.
back  
topic
Brady Knox


NextImg:Trump shows disdain for UN building after renovation snub

President Donald Trump devoted a significant portion of his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly in his second term to complaining about the building, continuing a two-decade-old feud.

Trump’s visit to the U.N. got off to a bad start: The escalator stopped as he stepped onto it with first lady Melania Trump. When he took the podium, the teleprompter was broken, prompting a further delay. The president began his speech by joking about the broken teleprompter.

Recommended Stories

“I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter, because the teleprompter is not working. I feel very happy to be up here with you, nevertheless, and that way you speak more from the heart,” Trump began. “I can only say that whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.”

LIVE UPDATES: WORLD LEADERS GATHER IN NEW YORK FOR 2025 UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY

He used the technical difficulties from the morning to drive home his point about how little the U.N. had assisted him in some of his biggest achievements during his first nine months back in office. He touted his role in ending seven major conflicts.

“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, but she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape,” he joked, earning laughs from the audience.

The remark threw his speech off course, leading to a several-minute-long aside on his grudge against the U.N. for snubbing him for a renovation contract in the early 2000s.

“And you know that many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York known as Donald J Trump … I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I remember so well,” Trump said.

“I’m going to give you marble floors, they’re going to give you terrazzo,” he recalled telling them. “I’m going to give you the best of everything. You’re going to have mahogany walls. They’re going to give you plastic. But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time, which actually produced a far inferior product.

“And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction, and that their building concepts were so wrong, and the product that they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly, it was going to cost them a fortune.”

He said the cost overruns were between $2 billion and $4 billion, all without getting the marble floors he promised them. The president felt vindicated over the breakdown of the escalator, saying they “still haven’t finished the job.”

He said the renovation project was “so corrupt” that Congress asked him to testify. He connected the renovation problems with the wider troubles of the U.N., using this as a segue to return to his speech.

TRUMP GOES SCORCHED EARTH ON UN AND ACCUSES IT OF NOT BEING FIT FOR PURPOSE

“Unfortunately, many things in the United Nations are happening just like that, but on an even much bigger scale,” Trump said.

The U.N. renovation project was initially projected to cost $1.2 billion, according to Politifact, but it ballooned to roughly $2.3 billion at completion in 2017. The U.S. government provided about $488 million.