US President Donald Trump delivers remarks to the United Nations Normal Meeting on the UN headquarters in New York Metropolis on September 23, 2025.
Timothy A. Clary | Afp | Getty Photos
President Donald Trump mocked the United Nations’ headquarters in a speech to the Normal Meeting, recalling his failed bid to renovate the constructing in New York.
“A few years in the past, a really profitable actual property developer in New York, referred to as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complicated,” Trump instructed the GA throughout wide-ranging remarks that questioned the aim of the UN.
“I stated on the time that I might do it for $500 million, rebuilding and every thing, it might be stunning,” Trump stated.
” I used to speak about, ‘I’ll provide you with marble flooring, they are going to provide you with terrazzo,’ ” he recalled. “‘I’ll provide the better of every thing, you are going to have mahogany partitions. They will provide you with plastic.'”
“I noticed that they didn’t know what they have been doing when it got here to development,” Trump stated.
He stated that the UN finally determined to go in “one other course,” which was “rather more costly on the time” and “produced a far inferior product.”
Trump started his speech studying from paper notes as a result of the teleprompter was not working.
The escalator on the UN additionally stopped working when he and First Girl Melania Trump stepped on it, fueling his assaults on the headquarters.
“These are the 2 issues I obtained from the United Nations: a foul escalator and a foul teleprompter,” Trump cracked.
In 2005, Trump requested a U.S. Senate committee to permit him to handle renovations of the UN, a request that was finally denied.
In his speech to world leaders on Tuesday, Trump criticized their international group, accusing the UN of working with “empty phrases, and empty phrases do not clear up wars.”
“The UN has such great potential, I’ve all the time stated it,” Trump stated.
“It has such great, great potential, however it’s not even coming near residing as much as that potential,” he stated in his deal with, which lasted almost an hour.
“All they appear to do is write a extremely strongly worded letter, after which by no means observe that letter up; it is empty phrases,” he continued.
Trump’s speech got here as he has withdrawn the US from a lot of completely different UN our bodies and slashed funding for the group.
Trump, who has lengthy been crucial of the UN, stated its member international locations “are being ruined” by immigration.
He additionally referred to as local weather change “a con job.”
Trump urged the UN to belief his imaginative and prescient for coverage, saying that he is “actually good at predicting issues.”
“Through the marketing campaign, they’d a hat. One of the best-selling hat, ‘Trump Was Proper About Every little thing,'” he recalled.
“And I do not say that in a braggadocious manner, however it’s true,” Trump stated.
