Trump demands investigation into alleged 'sabotage' of UN escalator, teleprompter
President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded an "immediate investigation" into what he claimed was "triple sabotage" during his United Nations visit on Tuesday, citing a stopped escalator and a teleprompter that wasn't working.
"A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday — Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!," he posted on his social media platform, saying he was sending a letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
"First, the escalator going up to the Main Speaking Floor came to a screeching halt. It stopped on a dime. It's amazing that Melania and I didn't fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster," he wrote.
"This was absolutely sabotage, as noted by a day's earlier "post" in The London Times that said UN workers "joked about turning off an escalator." The people that did it should be arrested!" he continued.
After complaining about a second issue -- how his teleprompter didn't work for the first 15 minutes of his address -- he claimed the audio in the General Assembly Hall has been turned off.
"And third, after making the Speech, I was told that the sound was completely off in the Auditorium where the Speech was made, that World Leaders, unless they used the interpreters' earpieces, couldn't hear a thing," he wrote. "The first person I saw at the conclusion of the Speech was Melania, who was sitting right up front. I said, "How did I do?" And she said, "I couldn't hear a word you said." This wasn't a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN. They ought to be ashamed of themselves."
As Trump and wife Melania stepped onto the escalator ahead of his speech on Tuesday morning, it stopped moving, prompting both of them to stop in their tracks.
The first couple then proceeded to walk up the escalator.
The U.N. has said that there appears to have been no foul play.
But that explanation hasn't satisfied White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who vowed to get to the bottom of Tuesday's incident..
"If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately," she said in an X post.
Leavitt repeated her warnings on Fox News Tuesday night, but didn't provide any evidence that what happened what deliberate.
"I know that we have people, including United States Secret Service, who are looking into this to try to get to the bottom of it," she said.
At the start of his address, when his teleprompter wasn't working, he complained about it at the time and then again later in the day.
"The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden halt as we were riding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty," Trump posted on his social media platform Tuesday.
The United Nations issued a statement about the incident, saying that the escalator stopping might have been triggered by a safety feature as a videographer was standing backward on the escalator, ahead of the president, while trying to film him.
"The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above," the U.N. statement said.
"Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor. A subsequent investigation, including a readout of the machine's central processing unit, indicated that the escalator had stopped after a built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the escalator," the U.N. statement continued. "The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above."
"All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button. The Secret Service is involved," Trump wrote in Wednesday's post.
The U.N. did not immediately respond to Trump's claim about the audio in the General Assembly Hall.
"We have no comment since the teleprompter for the U.S. president is operated by the White House," a U.N. spokesman reportedly said.
