President Donald Trump remains outraged by the apparent humiliations he endured during his visit to the United Nations.
The 79-year-old raged on Truth Social on Wednesday, describing “three very sinister events” he believed had occurred, and demanded an immediate investigation from the secretary general.
“A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday — Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!," Trump wrote in the post.
“First, the escalator going up to the Main Speaking Floor came to a screeching halt. It stopped on a dime. It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster,” Trump added, claiming the incident “was absolutely sabotage.”
Trump made reference to to a story in The Times that referred to staffers joking about turning off an escalator to force him to walk up the stairs. During his address, Trump complained that the escalator he and first lady Melania Trump used en route to the general assembly hall had stopped while they were on it.
The president fumed: “As noted by a day’s earlier ‘post’ in The London Times that said UN workers ‘joked about turning off an escalator.’ The people that did it should be arrested!"
Insider reports and a subsequent statement from the United Nations revealed that a videographer from Trump’s entourage caused the escalator issues after accidentally triggering the emergency stop.
Trump’s post continued, “Then, as I stood before a Television crowd of millions of people all over the World, and important Leaders in the Hall, my teleprompter didn’t work. It was stone cold dark. I immediately thought to myself, ‘Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’ I then proceeded to make a Speech without a teleprompter, which kicked in about 15 minutes later. The good news is the Speech has gotten fantastic reviews. Maybe they appreciated the fact that very few people could have done what I did.“
A person with knowledge of the situation told the Daily Beast that delegations typically bring their own laptops and teleprompter operators, and that the UN was not running it for the president’s speech.
Continuing to air his grievances, Trump wrote, “And third, after making the Speech, I was told that the sound was completely off in the Auditorium where the Speech was made, that World Leaders, unless they used the interpreters’ earpieces, couldn’t hear a thing. The first person I saw at the conclusion of the Speech was Melania, who was sitting right up front. I said, ‘How did I do?’ And she said, ‘I couldn’t hear a word you said.’ This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
The post comes after over 24 hours of continued complaints from Trump’s camp, including Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt concluding the malfunctions were sure signs of sabotage.
“First it was the escalator, then it was the teleprompter, and then Katie Pavlich from Townhall… noticed that the audio inside of the room was much lower and different for the president of the United States than the previous speaker,” Leavitt told Fox host Jesse Watters.
“When you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence.”
The sabotage theory appears to have resonated with Trump, who ended his post with a demand for an investigation into the matter by the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres.
“I’m sending a copy of this letter to the Secretary General, and I demand an immediate investigation. No wonder the United Nations hasn’t been able to do the job that they were put in existence to do. All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button. The Secret Service is involved.”
