In President Donald Trump’s first speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 2017, he casually threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. That wasn’t exactly an outlier. All his addresses to the General Assembly during that first term were crude, and at times shocking, pieces of “America First” oratory. But the speech Trump delivered Tuesday, which was more “Trump First” than “America First,” may have been the most blatantly humiliating one yet, as far as America’s reputation is concerned. Even more so than usual, Trump was bogged down by constant frivolous tangents and a fixation on trumpeting, often deceptively, what he counts as his accomplishments. And given that the backdrop of Trump’s speech is his all-out assault on democracy in his own country, his lecturing world leaders on how to run a great nation was shocking in its audacity.
There’s something about Trump’s degradation of the republic that hits harder before an international audience.
Trump peppered his remarks with constant petty asides about the United Nations’ New York headquarters, where he delivered Tuesday’s speech. He joked that someone was going to be in “big trouble” for an apparently malfunctioning teleprompter. He repeatedly complained about a stalled escalator that had forced him to exert more energy than should have been necessary. “All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” he said in one of multiple comments on the issue. He also reminisced about his failed bid to renovate the U.N. building in the early 2000s. “Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump — I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex,” he said. Trump panned the building’s terrazzo floors and said he would’ve brought marble floors to the building.
More significantly, he worked to undermine the credibility of the U.N. as an institution for peacekeeping and global governance. Everyone knows that the U.N.’s ability to enforce international law and produce binding resolutions is weak. But Trump’s specific attempt to prosecute this argument involved reprising a set of absurd and misleading talking points. For example, Trump falsely claimed to have ended seven “unendable” wars in seven months this term, and he declared, “It’s too bad I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.”
“Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements,” Trump said with a straight face. “But for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who lived to grow up with their mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and inglorious wars.” (Trump has reportedly lobbied a Norwegian government official to secure a Nobel Peace Prize, and he has made it a constant talking point for months.)
Trump praised his own record constantly in what at times resembled more of a State of the Union speech than a U.N. speech. He rambled about how the U.S. had become the “hottest country anywhere in the world” — and trashed countries that don’t share his worldview. He trumpeted his extreme right-wing crackdown on immigration as a model for the world and warned that other countries that didn’t do the same were facing extinction: “I’m really good at this stuff; your countries are going to hell.”
He blamed a growing effort by countries to recognize Palestine as a state as a “reward” for Hamas but offered no criticism of Israel for unilaterally reneging on a ceasefire and bombing Hamas leaders who were considering another U.S. proposal for one in Qatar. He trashed Europe for using Russian gas for energy — something Europe is working to end — but elided his own role in giving Moscow diplomatic cover in its war on Ukraine. Trump called green energy a “scam” and even had a putdown for windmills: “pathetic.” Perhaps most shameful was Trump’s Orwellian boast that he was a champion for personal liberties. “Together, let us defend free speech and free expression,” Trump said, as his administration pursues the extraordinary censorship of media figures who say things the administration doesn’t like. There’s something about Trump’s degradation of the republic that hits harder before an international audience; sometimes it feels as if the full impact of what Trump is putting us through is most evident when we’re forced to think about it from the eyes of outsiders. Washington Post reporter Ishaan Tharoor wrote on X that a senior foreign diplomat posted at the U.N. texted him about Trump’s remarks: “This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?” Yes, many Americans do see the embarrassment — and feel it. But not nearly enough do. And everything about Trump’s career suggests he’s entirely immune to the feeling.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. 
