US President Donald Trump addressed the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, delivering sharp criticism of the organization and outlining his country’s stance on key international challenges.
At the beginning of his speech, Trump quipped that the UN greeted him with “a broken escalator and a malfunctioning teleprompter,” adding that “somebody will be in big trouble.” “What is the purpose of the UN? It has enormous potential, but it’s not even close to realizing it. Words remain stronger than actions, and they don’t stop wars,” he said. Trump added that in his efforts to end wars around the world, he received no support from the UN.
He also criticized Joe Biden’s administration while highlighting his own achievements in migration policy. Trump declared that the US had “successfully repelled a migrant invasion” and reiterated a tough message for those attempting to enter the country illegally.
The American president also boasted that at the NATO summit in June, allies agreed to raise defense spending from 2% to 5% of GDP, which he said made the alliance “stronger than ever.”
Turning to the war in Ukraine, Trump argued that it “was supposed to be a small skirmish” and had brought Russia no prestige. “Every week, between 5,000 and 7,000 young soldiers from both sides are dying. This war would never have started if I had been president,” he stressed.
Trump also named China and India “the main sponsors of Russia’s war,” called on countries to abandon the development of biological and nuclear weapons, and lashed out at climate policy. He described climate change as “the greatest scam in the world,” green energy as “a path to bankruptcy,” and the concept of a carbon footprint as “a myth.”
Concluding his address, Trump urged UN member states to join the United States in creating “a safer and more prosperous world” and to abandon “the failed approaches of the past.”