Trump Addresses the UN General Assembly

Six years after last speaking to the UN General Assembly, President Donald Trump took full advantage of his return to Turtle Bay today. Asked to speak for fifteen minutes, he addressed the gathering of world leaders for nearly an hour. Rather than sketching a vision of how the world might cooperate to meet the challenges it faces, Trump touted his accomplishments and aired his grievances. The result likely thrilled his supporters just as it antagonized his critics.

Much of Trump’s speech was familiar to anyone who has watched a MAGA rally. He frequently went off script. He boasted of his domestic policy successes, complained that he had been overlooked for the Nobel Prize, and bragged that the United States is “the hottest country in the world.” Former President Joe Biden served as a punching bag throughout the speech. Trump mentioned his predecessor directly or indirectly nine times, accusing him of leading “the most corrupt, incompetent administration in history.”

Biden was not the only target of Trump’s barbs. The United Nations was as well. Some of his complaints were minor: a broken escalator on his way to the speech and a malfunctioning teleprompter once he reached the dais. Some were historical: he lamented losing a contract decades ago to renovate UN headquarters and claimed he would have done a far better job than the winning contractor and would have given the building marble rather than terrazzo floors. And some were substantive: he argued that the United Nations is failing to live up to its “tremendous potential.” Anyone familiar with the United Nations sympathized when he dismissed its penchant for a “strongly worded letter” and “empty words” in place of effective action. He offered no practical solutions, however, for improving the organization’s operations.

To the extent that Trump’s speech had a theme, it was the evils of immigration and renewable energy. He returned to both topics repeatedly. As he put it at the end of his remarks:

Immigration and the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet. Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.

Trump did not sugarcoat his case. He called “the crisis of uncontrolled migration” the “number one political issue of our time.” He argued that Europe is being “invaded” by migrants and that as the result of the failed experiment with open borders, “your countries are going to hell.” Likewise, he warned his fellow leaders that “if you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

As happens when Trump goes off script, his remarks were a fact-checker’s delight as he peppered his arguments with a bevy of dubious facts and figures. Contrary to what he claimed, the United Nations is not paying for migrants to enter the United States illegally. Likewise, China is building wind farms of its own—they now generate 13 percent of the country’s electricity—and not just selling wind turbines to the rest of the world.

Trump hailed his success in ending “seven unendable wars” in just eight months in office, a claim that both contains some truth and overstates his accomplishments. He did not break any new ground in his comments on the two wars he has not ended, Gaza and Ukraine. On the former, he called on Hamas to release the hostages it took nearly two years ago—a stance the audience applauded. He also criticized countries that have recently recognized Palestine as a state, saying Hamas would view the move as a “reward for these horrible atrocities, including October 7th.” And while he said that “we have to stop the war in Gaza immediately,” he offered no thoughts on how to accomplish that goal.

As for Ukraine, Trump said that the war was making Russia “look bad” and that he was “working relentlessly” to end the fighting. But he did not demand that Russian President Vladimir Putin stop his ramped-up attacks on Ukrainian civilians, let alone agree to a ceasefire. Trump noted that “China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil,” but he reserved his ire for Europe. He reiterated the position he staked out earlier this month that the United States will not increase economic pressure on Russia until Europe halts all oil and gas imports from Russia. It remains unclear whether Trump will follow through on this promise or whether he is using Europe’s shrinking purchases of Russian energy as an excuse to avoid taking a tougher line on Russia.

Trump said nothing about U.S.-Chinese relations, even though even most members of his own administration regard China as the top U.S. foreign policy priority. That silence might have reflected a desire not to derail his thus far unsuccessful effort to negotiate a trade deal with Beijing. If so, he likely undercut that objective with his remark that “just a few years ago, reckless experiments overseas gave us a devastating global pandemic.” Chinese officials know who he was blaming. By the same token, Trump did not take the opportunity to paint a vision of how the United States and China might cooperate for mutual gain.

The one place where Trump called on other countries to make common cause was on “ending the development of biological weapons once and for all.” He proposed using an “AI verification system” to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention. He offered no particulars on this new initiative and quickly returned to bemoaning the evils of migration.  

Trump’s supporters at home and abroad no doubt cheered what they heard. But his words likely did little to move other world leaders. By this point, they understand who they are dealing with, so they were likely neither surprised nor offended that his speech took on the air of a MAGA rally. Whether they support his policies or not, they know they have to deal with him.

World leaders also know that Trump can reverse course on a dime. As if to prove that point, he emerged from a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy early this afternoon with an entirely new diagnosis of the battlefield situation in Ukraine.

That’s a long way from saying that Ukraine has “no cards” to play in the war. The lesson here, then, may be that when it comes to Trump, the operative guidance is not “listen and learn” but “wait and see.”

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this post.