‘If Melania wasn’t in great shape…’: Trump complains about ‘bad’ escalator at UNGA, warns teleprompter guy after malfunction

As US President Donald Trump began his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday (Sep 23), he complained about a teleprompter and escalator malfunction at the New York headquarters of the UN. Trump joked that whoever was in charge of operating the equipment was “in big trouble.”

“I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter, because the teleprompter is not working. That way, you speak more from the heart… I can only say whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” Trump said, earning a laugh from the other leaders present at the session.

In his lengthy address, the US president claimed that the only things he received from the UN were a malfunctioning teleprompter and a broken escalator.

Speaking about the seven wars that he claims to have ended, Trump said, “I never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalising the deal. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up, stopped right in the middle,” he said.

“If the First Lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen,” Trump said. “But we’re in great shape, we’re both in good shape, and then the teleprompter didn’t work. These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said, “The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden hault as we were ridding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty.”

Trump also blasted UN in his speech, accusing it of being ineffective in ending conflicts around the world. He also claimed the credit of ending seven wars, saying that he “had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.”

The US president also questioned the purpose of the UN saying, “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should—too often, it is actually creating new problems... The United Nations is finding an assault on Western countries and their borders... The UN is supposed to stop invasions—not create them and not finance them.”