Escalatorgate:
Trump alleges ‘triple sabotage’ after technical mishaps at UN
Trump
claims teleprompter and audio issues, and a stopped escalator that UN says may
be due to US delegation staffer
Lauren
Gambino
Thu 25
Sep 2025 01.30 BST
Donald
Trump alleged “triple sabotage” at the United Nations, after the US president
was plagued by a series of unfortunate events surrounding his address to the
global body.
“A REAL
DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday,” Trump wrote Wednesday in
a 357-word social media chronicle of “Not one, not two, but three very sinister
events!”
According
to Trump, his smooth arrival at the summit in New York on Tuesday was disrupted
when the escalator ferrying him and the first lady, Melania Trump, “stopped on
a dime”. He expressed relief that the first couple “didn’t fall forward onto
the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first”.
Then,
when he took the green marble podium, his teleprompter went “stone cold dark”.
“I
immediately thought to myself, “Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad
teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’” Trump wrote. Adding insult to
injury, he recounted a third alleged offense. After being forced to improvise
part of his speech to the general assembly, he asked his wife how he had done,
and she replied: “I couldn’t hear a word you said.”
“This
wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN,” Trump declared,
demanding an “immediate” investigation into the matter, a diplomatic incident
so Trumpian it has earned the name “escalatorgate”.
“All
security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop
button. The Secret Service is involved,” Trump’s concluded his post. “Thank you
for your attention to this matter!”
Earlier
on Wednesday, the organization responded in a “note to correspondents”, titled
“on UN escalators”.
Stéphane
Dujarric, the UN spokesperson, said an investigation indicated that a
videographer from the US delegation who had run ahead of the first couple to
document their arrival may have “inadvertently triggered the safety function”
designed to prevent people or objects from accidentally getting caught in the
mechanism.
“As the
videographer, who was traveling backwards up the escalator reached the top ,
the First Lady, followed by President Trump, each mounted the steps at the
bottom,” Dujarric said. “At that moment (9:50am), the escalator came to a stop.
Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the
delegation had climbed up to the second floor.”
Footage
showed the 79-year-old president and the 55-year-old first lady stepping onto
the escalator at UN headquarters, before it lurched to a stop. Tightening their
grip on the handrails, the pair turns around quickly to see what caused them to
stall. A moment later, Melania Trump begins to climb the steps, trailed by her
husband.
Trump’s
Wednesday post suggests the president does not accept the UN’s conclusion into
the mishap on the moving stairway and believes there was a wider conspiracy
afoot.
While
technical difficulties might have beset his delivery in the General Assembly
Hall, Trump’s message was heard loud and clear around the world. In a combative
speech, Trump bashed the UN, questioning the purpose of its very existence, and
issued a dark warning to European allies that unless they curbed migration,
their countries were “going to hell”.
During
his address, Trump swerved from his prepared remarks to recount his fateful
entrance and, in his view, poor treatment at the assembly.
“All I
got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right
in the middle,” Trump said in his Tuesday speech. “If the first lady wasn’t in
great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape. We’re both in
good shape, we’re both still. And then a teleprompter that didn’t work.”
However,
it seemed unlikely that the audio problem was as bad as Trump made it out to
be. Video showed the audience reacting immediately to what Trump was saying,
including chuckling when the president declared with a hint of self-pity:
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a
bad teleprompter.”
Later
that evening, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged on Fox News
that the elevator stoppage was part of an intentional plot to humiliate the US
president.
“If we
find that these were UN and staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up,
literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well,
there better be accountability for those people. And I will personally see to
it,” she said.
In his
lengthy post on Wednesday afternoon, Trump pointed to a report in the Times of
London newspaper on Sunday saying that UN staff members had joked that they
would turn off the escalators and “tell him they ran out of money” – a jab at
the sweeping US funding cuts.
“The
people that did it should be arrested!” Trump wrote.
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