President Donald Trump on Sept. 24 said the Secret Service was probing what he alleged was “sabotage” at the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York, saying that a series of malfunctions with the venue’s sound, an escalator, and a teleprompter interfered with his speech the previous day.
“This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the U.N. They ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button.”
Trump said the escalator carrying him and first lady Melania Trump “came to a screeching halt” as it was taking them to the main floor, which he said nearly caused them to fall face-first. He said that whoever was involved should be arrested.
“Then, as I stood before a Television crowd of millions of people all over the World, and important Leaders in the Hall, my teleprompter didn’t work. It was stone cold dark,” Trump said.
The president added that after the speech wrapped, someone told him that “the sound was completely off in the Auditorium” where he was speaking, and that only world leaders using interpreters’ earpieces could hear his remarks.
Trump said he would refer the matter to the U.N. secretary general and demanded an “immediate investigation” with the Secret Service involved.
The U.N. did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
On Tuesday, Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. secretary general, released a statement saying that the U.S. delegation’s videographer may have inadvertently activated the escalator’s safety function while traveling up it backwards to film the president’s arrival.
“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,” Dujarric said, describing the mechanism as designed to prevent people or objects from getting caught or pulled into the gears.
“The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above,” he added.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to a Sept. 21 report by The Times of London—published two days before Trump arrived at the U.N. headquarters—which noted that U.N. staffers had been joking about turning off the escalators and elevators to mark Trump’s arrival, and tell the president that they had run out of money to operate them.
“So when you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence to me,” she told Fox News on Sept. 23.
Regarding the teleprompter malfunction, a U.N. official told Reuters on Tuesday that the White House was controlling its own teleprompter. The official said the sound system was set up to allow those at their seats to hear speeches translated into six different languages using earpieces.
Aldgra Fredly and Reuters contributed to this report.
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