US President Donald Trump delivers remarks to the United Nations Common Meeting on the UN headquarters in New York Metropolis on September 23, 2025.
Timothy A. Clary | Afp | Getty Photographs
President Donald Trump mocked the United Nations’ headquarters in a speech to the Common Meeting, recalling his failed bid to renovate the constructing in New York.
“A few years in the past, a really profitable actual property developer in New York, often known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations advanced,” Trump instructed the GA throughout wide-ranging remarks that questioned the aim of the UN.
“I mentioned on the time that I’d do it for $500 million, rebuilding and all the pieces, it might be lovely,” Trump mentioned.
” I used to speak about, ‘I’ll provide you with marble flooring, they will provide you with terrazzo,’ ” he recalled. “‘I’ll provide the better of all the pieces, you are going to have mahogany partitions. They will provide you with plastic.'”
“I noticed that they didn’t know what they had been doing when it got here to building,” Trump mentioned.
He mentioned that the UN finally determined to go in “one other route,” which was “rather more costly on the time” and “produced a far inferior product.”
Trump started his speech studying from paper notes as a result of the teleprompter was not working.
The escalator on the UN additionally stopped working when he and First Girl Melania Trump stepped on it, fueling his assaults on the headquarters.
“These are the 2 issues I bought from the United Nations: a foul escalator and a foul teleprompter,” Trump cracked.
In 2005, Trump requested a U.S. Senate committee to permit him to handle renovations of the UN, a request that was finally denied.
In his speech to world leaders on Tuesday, Trump criticized their world group, accusing the UN of working with “empty phrases, and empty phrases do not clear up wars.”
“The UN has such super potential, I’ve at all times mentioned it,” Trump mentioned.
“It has such super, super potential, however it’s not even coming near dwelling as much as that potential,” he mentioned in his tackle, which lasted practically an hour.
“All they appear to do is write a very strongly worded letter, after which by no means comply with that letter up; it is empty phrases,” he continued.
Trump’s speech got here as he has withdrawn the USA from a lot of totally different UN our bodies and slashed funding for the group.
Trump, who has lengthy been vital of the UN, mentioned its member international locations “are being ruined” by immigration.
He additionally referred to as local weather change “a con job.”
Trump urged the UN to belief his imaginative and prescient for coverage, saying that he is “actually good at predicting issues.”
“Throughout the marketing campaign, that they had a hat. The very best-selling hat, ‘Trump Was Proper About The whole lot,'” he recalled.
“And I do not say that in a braggadocious manner, however it’s true,” Trump mentioned.
