Trump's UN escalator fiasco

[Syne]

To mark Trump’s arrival, UN staff members have joked that they may turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they ran out of money, so he has to walk up the stairs.
- https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/a...-znb9n56vn

They told the London newspaper that they were going to do it, then it happened. So it's hard to believe that it had an innocent explanation.

That's not exactly the way to encourage the US government to be more favorable towards the UN...

They have no foresight. They're children.

[stryder]

To mark Trump’s arrival, UN staff members have joked that they may turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they ran out of money, so he has to walk up the stairs.
- https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/a...-znb9n56vn

They told the London newspaper that they were going to do it, then it happened. So it's hard to believe that it had an innocent explanation.

That's not exactly the way to encourage the US government to be more favorable towards the UN...

They have no foresight. They're children.

Thats a lot of conspiracies on the breakdown of a bit of tech. How many times have you seen an escalator with yellow tape around it waiting for repair? Especially in places that are busy. Shit happens.

That being said, if it had been someone trapped foot it would of likely triggered an alarm. It would mean that a breaker could of been flipped either from some poor grounding or because someone did intend to shut it off (perhaps to see if they could make him fall over for a photo op).

There is always the potential that Trump might of alluded to the plan of saying something that would be critical to a particular nation and they might have sabotaged things from the misinterpretation of what he was going to say. Since Trump does tend to keep people spinning, it would be difficult to point at exactly which thing it was and who he said it to, only he would know. (Although thrashing at the UN over it, might mean he's missed the point)

[Syne]

When UN staff say it and then it happens right as Melania and Trump are walking into it, it's not a coincidence.
Well, I guess if you believe in nonsense like manifesting, you might think otherwise. 9_9

[C C]

Trump initially seemed to view it all with good humor. But digging up the The Times Sunday article on Tuesday changed that, come Wednesday.

Due to being strapped for funding, the UN offices routinely, temporarily, shut off their escalators. But it would be litigation risky for them to do that when people are actually on one.

The problem with the teleprompter looks deliberate, if the UN staff truly did prevent the White House staff from setting it up prior to Trump's speech.

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/nx-s1-555...estigation

EXCERPTS: Trump took a moment to recount — and seemingly laugh off — the technical difficulties of the day. [...] Afterward, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he believed his speech was "very well received," and that the teleprompter and escalator malfunctions "probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise."

But his tone quickly changed. By Wednesday, Trump was calling the escalator incident "absolutely sabotage" and calling for the arrest of those responsible. "It's amazing that Melania and I didn't fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first," Trump wrote. "It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster."

[...] The U.N. is in a deepening financial struggle, due in large part to the decisions of what was once its largest funder, the U.S.; the Trump administration has stopped paying its portion of the U.N.'s budget and halted funding to specific U.N. programs. The Associated Press reported that U.N. offices in New York and Geneva have intermittently shut off their escalators and elevators as part of cost-saving measures.

[...] On Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested in a tweet that U.N. staff may have intentionally stopped the escalator as the president and first lady stepped onto it. She shared a screenshot from a Sunday story in the British newspaper The Times: "To mark Trump's arrival, UN staff members have joked that they may turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they ran out of money, so he has to walk up the stairs."

[...] The U.N. says the U.S. delegation is responsible for operating the president's teleprompter and referred questions to the White House. In a statement to NPR, the White House said its staffers were "prevented by UN staff" from setting up the teleprompter prior to Trump's speech as promised, so were left "trying to set the teleprompter up as the President was speaking."

[Syne]

Like I said, kick 'em all out of the country.

[Yazata]

While they might conceivably shut off the escalator to save money when nothing is happening in the building, should we really believe that they would shut it off during a UN General Assembly meeting filled with multiple Heads of State??