US President Donald Trump delivers remarks to the United Nations General Assembly on the UN headquarters in New York City on September 23, 2025.
Timothy A. Clary | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump mocked the United Nations’ headquarters in a speech to the General Assembly, recalling his failed bid to renovate the constructing in New York.
“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,” Trump advised the GA throughout wide-ranging remarks that questioned the aim of the UN.
“I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding and everything, it would be beautiful,” Trump stated.
“I used to talk about, ‘I’m going to give you marble floors, they’re going to give you terrazzo,'” he recalled. “‘I’m going to give you the best of everything, you’re going to have mahogany walls. They’re going to give you plastic.'”
“I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction,” Trump stated.
He stated that the UN in the end determined to go in “another direction,” which was “much more expensive at the time” and “produced a far inferior product.”
Trump started his speech studying from paper notes as a result of the teleprompter was not working.
The escalator on the UN additionally stopped working when he and First Lady Melania Trump stepped on it, fueling his assaults on the headquarters.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” Trump cracked.
A United Nations official stated later Tuesday that an individual touring with Trump inadvertently hit the cease lever on the escalator, inflicting it to come back to an abrupt halt, in line with the Associated Press.
The official additionally famous that the president’s workforce was answerable for working the teleprompter, the AP reported.
In 2005, Trump requested a U.S. Senate committee to permit him to handle renovations of the UN, a request that was in the end denied.
In his speech to world leaders on Tuesday, Trump criticized their international group, accusing the UN of working with “empty words, and empty words don’t solve wars.”
“The UN has such tremendous potential, I’ve always said it,” Trump stated.
“It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential,” he stated in his address, which lasted almost an hour.
“All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter, and then never follow that letter up; it’s empty words,” he continued.
Trump’s speech got here as he has withdrawn the United States from plenty of completely different UN our bodies and slashed funding for the group.
Trump, who has lengthy been crucial of the UN, stated its member international locations “are being ruined” by immigration.
He additionally known as local weather change “a con job.”
Trump urged the UN to belief his imaginative and prescient for coverage, saying that he is “really good at predicting things.”
“During the campaign, they had a hat. The best-selling hat, ‘Trump Was Right About Everything,'” he recalled.
“And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true,” Trump stated.