(Dobbs) First He Embarrasses Us, Then He Embarrasses Himself

"There are two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

After the president talked Tuesday to the United Nations— after he talked down to the United Nations— I turned to a group I was with and said, “The man is mad, stark-raving mad.”

I wasn’t the only one.

Washington Post foreign affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor reported on X, “A senior foreign diplomat posted at the UN texts me: ‘This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?’”

Embarrassing isn’t the half of it. On Tuesday he embarrassed us, then on Wednesday he embarrassed himself.

In case you haven’t read the president’s actual remarks to the 80th General Assembly of the United Nations, for which 193 nations came together to focus on climate change, global hunger, artificial intelligence, and wars the world over, Trump went into stream-of-consciousness mode with a personal grievance just minutes into his hour-long rant: “I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter, because the teleprompter is not working. There are two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

The backstory is, when the president and the first lady stepped onto an escalator to ascend to the General Assembly hall, it abruptly lurched to a halt. He told the diplomats.… as if this was the best use of his time at the podium…. “If the First Lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen. But she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape, we both stood.”

Then the teleprompter failed. Which led to another spontaneous observation, which might have been a joke but when’s the last time you heard Donald Trump tell a joke? “I can only say that whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.”

But that was just the start. He wove through a junkyard of non-sequiturs and a litany of lies to the world body:

• “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

I’m not sure “everyone” quite captures it, and I’m certainly not sure that telling the Charlie Kirk memorial rally last weekend in Arizona, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them,” is what the Peace Prize committee is looking for.

Satirist Andy Borowitz had a good take on it: “According to insiders, Trump’s bid for a Nobel is now lagging far behind that of another Peace Prize aspirant, Kim Jong Un.”

• On energy, the president told the U.N., “We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables.”

True, we are getting rid of renewables, at our peril. But it is false that they are “falsely named.” Solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power and others are renewable. Fossil fuels are not. Then he said, “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things.”

Right. Like the way he predicted a quick end to the wars in both Gaza and Ukraine?

• He got personal about the mayor of London, a Muslim of Pakistani heritage, who was nowhere near New York that day:

“I look at London where you have a terrible mayor. A terrible, terrible mayor. And it’s been so changed, so changed. Now they want to go to Sharia law.”

Sharia law. What nonsense.

It was not Trump’s first shot at Mayor Sadiq Khan, who shot right back, “I think President Trump has shown he is racist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic, and he is Islamophobic. I appear to be living rent-free inside Donald Trump’s head.”

• He is also a bitter loser who never forgets a grudge. Back in the early 2000’s, Trump the developer wanted to win a bid to renovate U.N. headquarters. But he lost. Now, two decades later, he somehow thought it made sense to share his complaint with the United Nations: “I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction, and that their building concepts were so wrong, and the product that they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly. Frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck in the escalator, they still haven’t finished the job.”

• In his continuing campaign not to make friends and influence people, which some might say is part of a president’s job description, Trump told his fellow world leaders,

“Look at Europe. Your countries are going to hell. Invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before. Open borders and energy policies are destroying Europe.”

• “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before.”

Sorry Mr. President, since you got back in the White House, it’s the other way around. Especially after Tuesday’s speech. As the diplomat texted to The Washington Post’s Ishoor, “Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?”

• Finally, in the ultimate example of ego running amok:

“They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat: ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”

OMG, what can I even say? Remember, with all of this, he’s speaking to the 80th U.N. General Assembly, but seems to think it’s his 80th campaign rally.

And that was just what Trump said Tuesday, which should embarrass every American. Wednesday is when he embarrassed himself.

Still stuck on the escalator and the teleprompter, Trump wrote on his website, “A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday - Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!” (He also claims the sound was off when he spoke.) “It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster.” Then he charged, “This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Except evidently it’s the White House that ought to be ashamed, not the United Nations. Although Donald Trump doesn’t wait for facts before pointing fingers, the U.N.’s Secretary General did wait for a fact-finding investigation before reporting last night that a safety mechanism at the top of the escalator was tripped off by the White House videographer, who had run to the top as the Trumps were boarding at the bottom. “The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing.”

As for the teleprompter, apparently it was someone from the White House operating it. As they always do.

So Trump didn’t get “a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter” from the United Nations, as he sourly told the General Assembly. He got them from his own White House.

Before this all got explained, Trump’s U.N. ambassador Mike Waltz ominously warned in a post on X, “The United States will not tolerate threats to our security or dignity at international forums, we expect swift cooperation and decisive action.” Note to Waltz: the biggest threat to our dignity on Tuesday, or any other day, is Donald J. Trump himself.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net