UNITED NATIONS — President Donald Trump returned to the United Nations on Tuesday to boast of his second-term foreign policy achievements and lash out at the world body as a feckless institution, while warning Europe it would be ruined if it doesn’t turn away from a “double-tailed monster” of ill-conceived migration and green energy policies.
His roughly hour-long speech was both grievance-filled and self-congratulatory as he used the platform to praise himself and lament that some of his fellow world leaders’ countries were “going to hell.”
Watch live as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his address to the United Nations General Assembly.
The address was also just the latest reminder for U.S. allies and foes that the United States — after a four-year interim under the more internationalist President Joe Biden — has returned to the unapologetically “America First” posture under Trump.
“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump said. “The U.N. has such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”
World leaders listened closely to his remarks at the U.N. General Assembly as Trump has already moved quickly to diminish U.S. support for the world body in his first eight months in office. Even in his first term, he was no fan of the flavor of multilateralism that the United Nations espouses.
After his latest inauguration, he issued a first-day executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization. That was followed by his move to end U.S. participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council, and ordering up a review of U.S. membership in hundreds of intergovernmental organizations aimed at determining whether they align with the priorities of his “America First” agenda.
Trump escalated that criticism on Tuesday, saying the international body’s “empty words don’t solve wars.”
Trump offered a weave of jarring juxtapositions in his address to the assembly.
He trumpeted himself as a peacemaker and enumerated successes of his administration’s efforts in several hotspots around the globe. At the same, Trump heralded his decisions to order the U.S. military to carry out strikes on Iran and more recently against alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela and argued that globalists are on the verge of destroying successful nations.
The U.S. president’s speech is typically among the most anticipated moments of the annual assembly. This one comes at one of the most volatile moments in the world body’s 80-year-old history. Global leaders are being tested by intractable wars in Gaza,Ukraine and Sudan, uncertainty about the economic and social impact of emerging artificial intelligence technology, and anxiety about Trump’s antipathy for the global body.
Trump has also raised new questions about the American use of military force in his return to the White House, after ordering U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June and a trio of strikes this month on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The latter strikes, including at least two fatal attacks on boats that originated from Venezuela, has raised speculation in Caracas that Trump is looking to set the stage for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Some U.S. lawmakers and human rights advocates say that Trump is effectively carrying out extrajudicial killings by using U.S. forces to lethally target alleged drug smugglers instead of interdicting the suspected vessels, seizing any drugs and prosecuting the suspects in U.S. courts.
Trump touted his administration’s policies allowing for expanded drilling for oil and natural gas in the United States, and aggressively cracking down on illegal immigration, implicitly suggesting more countries should follow suit.
He sharply warned that European nations that have more welcoming migration policies and commit to expensive energy projects aimed at reducing their carbon footprint were causing irreparable harm to their economies and cultures.
“I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from the ‘green energy’ scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump said. “If you don’t stop people that you’ve never seen before that you have nothing in common with your country is going to fail.”
Trump added, “I love the people of Europe, and I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer.”
The passage of the wide-ranging address elicited some groans and uncomfortable laughter from delegates.
