What Did Donald Trump Say at the U.N.?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the need for a U.S. President who stands up for Americans and who is willing to use bluntness in facing foreign leaders with things as they really are. President Donald Trump appears to be such a POTUS as shown by his recent visit to the United Nations.

According to Victor Davis Hanson and numerous news stories, Trump did not receive a warm welcome at the United Nations when he, the First Lady Melania Trump, and their entourage arrived there. As soon as Mrs. Trump stepped onto the escalator, “it mysteriously shut down” – fulfilling a truth reported in a story in the London Times: “some members wanted to shut it down in protest of Trump’s cutting back on U.N. support.” 

If the escalator incident (1) had been the only problem that day, it could be understood – even though the escalator magically worked once the Trumps walked up the stairs. However, Hanson reported on three other situations that were odd: (2) The teleprompter suddenly stopped working, (3) The sound system did not work – no one could hear him. Hanson called it Deamplified, and (4) The translation to the membership came in Portuguese instead of English.

All four of those circumstances were almost impossible to occur in one session. So, what am I getting at? This is very serious. It means that the United Nations has employees, or perhaps administrators, who deliberately tried to sabotage an American president while on American soil.

So, Donald Trump, as he was experiencing the breakdown in the teleprompter, and had just gone through the escalator shock, decided to lengthen his speech from 15 minutes to about 55, and he had some blockbuster things to say.

First of all, the U.N. did not like it. They sat in stony silence. Why? First of all, he said the U.N. had been of no real importance when he was trying to negotiate peace, or at least a ceasefire, with the Congo and Rwanda, with Serbia and Bosnia, with Russia, of course, and Ukraine, Pakistan and India. I could go on, but he had seven separate conflicts that he at least got a temporary ceasefire. There was no U.N. praise, there was no U.N. input.

The subtext, what he was saying, is that most of their declarations of condemnation are against tiny Israel. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would follow his appearance at the U.N. and half – at least a lot of the contingents – just simply walked out. [There was no walk out for the Palestinians, for Chinese leader Xi Jinping (million people in a Uyghur labor camp), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (for 50 years illegally occupied Northern Cyprus), or a Russian diplomat (killed more than 150,000 Ukrainians in the current war).]

It's only selective because Israel is tiny, it’s Western, and … it’s Jewish. But Donald Trump – so, he knows all that in advance and he has no respect for the U.N.

The other subtext that got the U.N. people very angry was that he talked about Europe – not Africa, not Asia, not Latin America. And they felt excluded. But he – it was very passive-aggressive. He said to Europe: I love Europe. I want you to fulfill, essentially, your shared Western heritage with us, but you’re not doing it, and you’re not doing it for three or four things.

No. 1, you’ve embarked on a suicidal energy policy that subsidizes inefficient and unsustainable green energy – solar and wind, specifically – and you’ve given up oil and natural gas and clean coal and nuclear, and you’ve lost your competitive edge and your consumers are hurting.

No. 2, you let in millions of illegal immigrants – and not just any illegal immigrants, mostly from the war-torn Middle East, who were Islamic and had no desire to adapt to, integrate with, or assimilate with Western civilization’s customs, cultural norms.

And therefore, you’ve got a terrible problem with immigration, you’ve got inefficient energy, and you’re disarmed. And I’m lecturing you, Trump said, because I love Europe and I want you to be a full partner.

And that offended the rest of the world that wasn’t – didn’t get that privilege of having a U.S. president talk directly to them, but it also got the Europeans angry because he was telling them the truth.