US President Donald Trump gave his most combative speech at the United Nations General Assembly so far on Tuesday. Launching a tirade against the international body for its alleged ineffectiveness in maintaining peace as well as for leading a “globalist migration agenda”, Trump implied it was he, and not the UN, that had played a key role in settling global conflicts. Trump claimed that he has ended seven wars, only to be fact-checked by the news media later. The US President also pushed back against the countries, including Canada, that recognised Palestine earlier this week despite opposition from the US and Israel. Trump said their actions would only embolden Hamas and would be a reward for its terror attack that it carried out against Israel on October 7, 2023, which set off the war in Gaza.
Trump railed against UN bodies for their climate change action and called it “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He encouraged countries to redirect their energies into buying fossil fuels from the US, and mocked renewable energy as a “green energy agenda” that was only ruining countries.
But the most inflammatory part of Trump’s speech pertained to migration in Europe and North America. Trump called upon countries to close their borders to migrants and expel all foreigners. He also claimed that the UN was “funding an assault on your countries”, implying that global migration was happening under the aegis of the world body. Trump also spoke condescendingly to other European leaders, accusing them of destroying their heritage by allowing migration all due to misplaced “political correctness.” “If you don’t stop people that you’ve never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail,” Trump said.
Trump’s domestic policy found expression in his UN address, which ran into a hurdle right at the beginning when his teleprompter failed, forcing him to speak impromptu.