The White House called for an investigation of a United Nations security team after alleging that staffers may have intentionally stopped the escalator carrying President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump ahead of a U.N. speech on Tuesday.
Trump mentioned the escalator in his speech, which warned about Western Europe’s immigration and energy policies during the U.N. General Assembly’s 80th session in New York City.
Trump’s speech also noted a number of glitches including the escalator and a broken teleprompter.
“If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X.
Leavitt noted that The Times’ Washington Editor Katy Balls had reported about just such a stunt on Sunday.
“To mark Trump’s arrival, UN staff members have joked that they may turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they ran out of money, so he has to walk up the stairs,” she wrote in a piece on Sunday.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, said the escalator worked properly and stopped because of a safety feature that a videographer may have tripped.
“After passing through the security gates, President Trump and the First Lady approached the escalator. In an effort to document their arrival, a videographer from the US delegation stepped on to the escalator ahead of the President and First Lady,” Dujarric said in a statement. “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. 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.”
Dujarric said a subsequent investigation that included 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. The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”
Trump said it was an honor to speak before the U.N., but noted the mishaps.
“The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden halt as we were riding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty.”
