The American President speaks of immigration, war, and the American economy to world leaders.
On Tuesday, Sept. 23, President Donald Trump stood in front of the United Nations for the first time since the end of his last term as president. He gave an almost hour-long address and spent most of it berating the UN for its actions. His speech included topics such as the faults within the United Nations’ physical building, the state of the current U.S. economy, immigration, war in Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine, renewable energy, oil and climate change. In giving his opinion on the state of the UN building, President Trump reminisced about the time he put in a bid to remodel it. He said, “These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.” He further stated, “As far as I’m concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck on the escalator, they still haven’t finished the job.”
President Trump also bragged about the state of the U.S. economy, claiming that in just eight months since resuming office, America has solicited foreign investments worth $17 trillion, and that in his first term, he “built the greatest economy in the history of the world. He then claimed that “this time it’s actually much bigger and even better.” In making these claims, President Trump failed to cite evidence for them, prompting questions of their reliability. Many say these claims are dubious as it is uncertain where President Trump is finding the evidence to support these assertions. In what some may consider the most controversial part of the speech, President Trump addressed immigration. He tells the other members of the UN that their “countries are going to hell,” claiming that, “proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people they have never seen before with different customs, religions, with different everything.”
President Donald Trump @potus on Instagram
President Trump then started his discussion of war by claiming to have ended the “12-day war,” a conflict between Iran and Israel that ended with the U.S. bombing an Iranian nuclear site and pressuring them to agree to a ceasefire. Trump also discussed the Israel-Palestine conflict in Gaza and claimed that there needs to be an immediate ceasefire. However, he refused to acknowledge the right to a Palestinian state, claiming, “the rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists for their atrocities.” This position is consistent with a recent vote in the UN in which the U.S. denied the right to a Palestinian state, contrary to the position taken by Canada, France and the UK, which all voted opposingly to the U.S. Lastly, President Trump discussed the war between Russia and Ukraine and how he thought the war would be over already due to his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He told the members of the UN to, “immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia” since most of Europe still relies on Russia for its oil and gas.
On the topic of renewable energy, President Trump said that renewable energy sources are “a joke. They don’t work.” He continued to make claims about renewable energy sources such as windmills, believing them to be entirely ineffective and a scam by the Chinese as a means of profiting off of the rest of the world. He also claimed that global warming and climate change are “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and that climate change predictions “were made by stupid people.” As with his claims about the economy, these claims seem to have very little empirical evidence backing them up.
While these claims are in line with President Trump’s previously stated beliefs, they differ in the fact that he made them on a world stage in address to foreign diplomats and world leaders. His address to the UN, filled with semi-personal attacks against the members of the UN, criticized other nations that did not adopt similar policies to those being carried out under Trump’s current administration.
