(AFP) – US President Donald Trump relentlessly mocked the United Nations on Tuesday in his first address since his White House comeback, blasting it for failing to bring peace and claiming the world body encourages illegal migration. In his return to the UN General Assembly podium, Trump accused the UN of fostering an “assault” through migration on Western countries that he said were “going to hell.”
He likewise used the major forum to denounce efforts to reduce global warming, calling climate change concerns “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” asked Trump. “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter,” he said. “It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”
The 79-year-old even complained about a broken escalator and teleprompter at the New York headquarters of the UN, which he has repeatedly targeted during both of his presidential terms. “This is these are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” he said. Touting what he said were his efforts to end seven wars, Trump turned to two where his outreach has produced no results — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
He called recognition by a slate of Washington’s allies of a Palestinian state a “reward” to armed group Hamas for “horrible atrocities” and urged the group to release hostages to reach peace. Trump lashed out at European allies, as well as China and India, for failing to stop oil purchases from Russia, while remaining relatively restrained on Moscow even as he said Washington was ready to impose unspecified sanctions.
Some of his strongest language was reserved for migration as he lambasted the UN for “funding an assault” on Western nations. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders,” Trump said. “Your countries are going to hell,” he said, also attacking London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital.
Trump’s second term has opened with a blaze of nationalist policies curbing cooperation with the rest of the world. He has moved to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization and the UN climate pact, severely curtailed US development assistance and wielded sanctions against foreign judges over rulings he sees as violating sovereignty.
Opening the annual summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that aid cuts led by the United States were “wreaking havoc” in the world. “What kind of world will we choose? A world of raw power — or a world of laws?” Guterres said.
On Ukraine, Trump will meet President Volodymyr Zelensky for the second time since he sat down in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 — a summit that broke Moscow’s isolation in the West but yielded no breakthrough on Ukraine. Despite Trump’s insistence that he can broker a quick end to the war, Russia has not only kept up its barrage of attacks on Ukraine in the past month but rattled nerves with drone or air incursions in NATO members Poland, Estonia and Romania.
Trump said last week that Putin had “really let me down.” One of Trump’s few other one-on-one meetings will be with Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei, an ideological ally to whose government the United States is considering offering an economic lifeline.
Ahead of his visit to the UN district, swarming with heavily armed police and agents and crisscrossed with barricades and road closures, the US Secret Service said they had disrupted a “telecommunications-related” plot. The Secret Service said it a weaponized farm of more than 100,000 cellphone SIM cards that was capable of blocking communications around the UN, and that it “nation-state threat actors” were involved.
– Shaun Tandon with Danny Kemp in Washington
© 2024 AFP
