'Your countries are going to hell': Trump berates Europe, slams United Nations
'Your countries are going to hell': Trump berates Europe, slams United Nations
In a 55-minute speech on Tuesday that defied the very mission of the United Nations itself, US President Donald Trump called global warming "a con job", European policies on clean energy "suicidal", and accused the UN of offering little more than "empty words".
The remarks were Trump's first of his second term in office, and much of it focused on brandishing his domestic achievements and deriding the UN and other countries' policies on immigration, peacemaking, climate change and multilateralism.
The president said his country was now in a "golden age", and imparted lessons to "the free world": close your borders, and return to traditional energy sources.
"Your countries are going to hell," he said.
"In America... once we started detaining and deporting everyone [coming] across the border and removing illegal aliens from the United States, they simply stopped coming. They're not coming anymore," Trump told a packed auditorium of world leaders and UN delegations.
"We reject the idea that mass numbers of people from foreign lands can be permitted to travel halfway around the world, trample our borders, violate our sovereignty, cause unmitigated crime and deplete our social safety net."
The president directed much of his ire at western Europe, which he said he worries about and cares a great deal for.
"I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake," Trump said.
"The migrants have violated laws" in Europe, he told the room, and "should be immediately sent home".
European nations, he stressed repeatedly, are "destroying [their] heritage" by allowing immigrants to "change" what their cities look like.
The US president singled out the Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, saying the British capital wants "to go to Sharia law" and that "their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of western Europe".
Those energy ideas have focused on investments in clean energy and rolling back the European carbon footprint, but Trump insisted that "climate change is a con job".
"All green is all bankrupt. That's what it represents. And it's not politically correct. I'll be very badly criticised for saying it, but to tell the truth, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. I'm in New York City," he told the General Assembly, referring to the city where he was born and grew his fortune in real estate.
The US, he said, has the cleanest air in the world - and if it's ever dirty, that's "because it comes from other countries", singling out China in particular.
"Congratulations, Europe. Great job. Cost yourself a lot of jobs, a lot of factories closed, but you reduced the carbon footprint by 37 percent," Trump said.
"For all of that sacrifice and much more, it's been totally wiped out, and then some, by a global increase of 54 percent, much of it coming from China."
Russia and Israel
The US president repeatedly boasted of "ending seven wars" in less than a year in office: between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
While his administration has drawn up agreements to allow for the US to access energy resources in return, it's unclear if Washington is a long-term peace guarantor in all those conflicts.
Still, the two foremost crises with the greatest ripple effect on the world order and global economy remain unresolved: The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel's genocide in Gaza.
The US has largely turned its back on the latter and allowed for Israel to singlehandedly determine outcomes on the ground, even though Trump had pledged to bring a ceasefire to fruition.
"We have to stop the war in Gaza immediately," Trump said. "We have to stop it. Have to get it done. We have to negotiate immediately. Have to negotiate peace. We've got to get the hostages back. We want all 20 back," he said of the ones believed to still be alive in Gaza.
But the obstacle is that "Hamas has repeatedly rejected reasonable offers to make peace", he added, despite the group having confirmed it accepted multiple ceasefire proposals put forward by both the Biden and Trump administrations.
"You can't forget October 7," he continued. "As if to encourage continued conflict, some of this body is seeking to unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state. The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists, for their atrocities."
The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, was seen at his seat applauding the statement.
The Trump administration did not send a representative to sit in on the Palestinian statehood conference co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia one day earlier, but so far, more than 150 countries have opted to recognise a Palestinian state, in effect isolating the US.
Where the president did threaten tangible action, however, was on Russia.
"In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs, which would stop the bloodshed, I believe, very quickly," Trump warned, specifically naming India, China and European countries.
"But for those tariffs to be effective, European nations, all of you are gathered here right now, would have to join us in adopting the exact same measures."
Europe, despite taking punitive measures against Russia since 2022, remains heavily reliant on Russian gas for its survival.
"Europe has to step it up," Trump said. "It's embarrassing for them."
'Empty words'
The Trump administration has made no secret of its aim to weaken the UN and the role it plays in mediating global conflicts and distributing aid to affected populations.
A permanent US ambassador to the UN was only confirmed last week, that being Trump's hawkish former national security adviser Mike Waltz.
An hour before Trump took to the podium, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned world leaders that humanity had entered "an age of reckless disruption and relentless human suffering", largely because of unchecked violence against the people of Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.
But the US president derided the post-World War Two multilateral institution that his country helped build, and whose headquarters it hosts.
"What is the purpose of the United Nations?" he asked. "The UN has such tremendous potential. I've always said it... but it's not even coming first and living up to that potential."
"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," Trump said.
But the UN is only as effective as the will of its member states.
Just as Russia has vetoed Security Council resolutions that would bind it to a ceasefire in Ukraine, the US has now voted six times to veto a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel to allow unfettered aid to enter the enclave.
The Trump administration has also stopped all funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, and has called it an organisation that harbours terrorists.
The perception of a decaying and useless United Nations was not helped by technical difficulties that Trump encountered within his first few minutes inside the building on Tuesday.
As he and First Lady Melania Trump approached the escalator in the lobby of the main hall, the escalator came to an abrupt halt, and they both carried themselves up the stairs.
Then, as Trump took to the podium, the teleprompter stopped working, and he improvised his opening before looking down at a paper copy of his intended remarks.
After negotiating "ending seven wars", Trump said, he "never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalising the deals. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the First Lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen".
He recalled a bid on the UN building in his past life as a billionaire businessman in New York.
"I said at the time that I would do it for $500m. Rebuilding everything beautiful," he insisted.
"I used to talk about, I'm going to give you marble floors. They're going to give you terrazzo. I'm going to give you the best of everything. You're going to have mahogany walls. They're going to give you plastic," he said, shaking his head at what the place looks like today.
"These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much."
