Today's Edition
NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG)
US President Donald Trump assailed the United Nations in a grievance-laden speech that accused the world body of offering nothing but “empty words,” while also labelling climate change a “con job” and warning that open borders risked destroying nations.
Trump began his speech to the UN General Assembly began by venting his frustration that the UN had not done more to support his diplomatic efforts.
He faulted the organisation over an escalator that broke down just as First Lady Melania Trump stepped onto it, said his teleprompter had broken down, and ruminated on his rejected bid to renovate the UN headquarters.
“I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalising the deal,” Trump said Tuesday.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations - a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter, thank you very much.”
Trump's address ran for nearly an hour, in which he faulted green-energy and pro-immigration policies of other countries. He also painted his crackdown on migrants as a humanitarian effort because it kept people from enduring violence and death in the effort to enter the US.
Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” and reserved his sharpest attacks for other countries' immigration policies, and for UN support for asylum seekers.
“The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them, and not finance them,” he sai.
"What is the purpose of the United Nations? At least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up? It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action," Trump added.
