US President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted the UN and Europe on his return to the world body, warning that migration is sending Western nations “to hell” and dismissing climate change as a “con job.”
In a blistering speech during his first UN General Assembly appearance since his White House comeback, Trump also accused the world body of failing to help him as he tried to broker peace deals including in Gaza and Ukraine.
“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump asked in a wide-ranging speech lasting nearly an hour. “It has such tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that.”
Photo: AFP
Trump’s first speech to the UN in 2018 saw fellow leaders laughing at the Republican president, but this time his full-frontal attack on the global organization and US allies was received in near total silence.
His litany of complaints even extended to a broken escalator and teleprompter at the New York headquarters of the UN.
Trump’s fieriest words of the speech were on migration, as he advised the world to follow his lead on one of the core political messages that drove his two US election victories.
Trump lambasted the UN for “funding an assault” on Western nations that he described as an “invasion,” before turning his fire on the US’ allies in Europe.
“Your countries are going to hell,” he told European leaders.
Trump also criticized the UN for failing to get involved in what he claims are seven wars that he has ended, or in his failed attempts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza.
“All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter,” he said. “It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”
On Gaza, a subject that has dominated the UN summit, Trump called recognition of a Palestinian state by US allies including France and the UK a “reward” to Hamas for “horrible atrocities “ in the armed group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
However, French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said that Trump could only achieve his long-held goal of a Nobel Peace Prize if he stopped the Gaza war.
Trump’s speech differed greatly from the comments of other leaders at the summit, who called for nations to come together to overcome global challenges.
Separately, the US Secret Service said it dismantled a network of sophisticated electronic devices in the New York area that had been used to threaten US government officials.
“Early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement,” it said.
Authorities seized more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites in an operation the agency said represented an imminent threat to its protective operations.
“This network had the potential to disable cellphone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,” Matt McCool, special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in New York, said in a video statement.
Additional reporting by AP and Reuters
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