Five takeaways from Trump’s UN speech

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — It was perhaps an ominous sign when the first thing President Donald Trump said in his United Nations General Assembly speech Tuesday was that his teleprompter was broken.

“I feel very happy to be up here with you nevertheless,” he said, sounding less than happy. “That way you speak more from the heart.”

What could have been a minor technical snafu — a UN official said it was up to the White House to operate the president’s prompter; a White House official said it was the UN’s apparatus — instead foretold a speech that both veered well off-script and questioned the UN’s ability to solve problems much bigger than malfunctioning audio-visual equipment.

Trump used the yearly foreign policy address to castigate foreign allies for supposedly ruining their countries with unchecked migration, fueling foreign conflicts with purchases of Russian energy, and ignoring his own peacemaking efforts.

He addressed the most pressing foreign conflicts — the wars in Ukraine and Gaza — only in passing, instead reserving most of his speech to bemoan efforts to combat climate change, tout his own approach to world issues and take swipes at his predecessor (he used former President Joe Biden’s name six times in the speech).

“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” he said at one point while talking about migration, a sentiment that neatly summed up the thesis of his speech.

In a sign of just how much the world has changed since he was laughed at from the same podium by delegates in his first term, the audience Tuesday sat mostly silent.

Here are five takeaways from Trump’s speech at the United Nations.

A lecture on migration

Trump spent much of his time in the General Assembly hall offering criticism of other nations’ immigration policies, accusing the UN of “funding an assault on Western countries” due to insufficient migration controls and warning the fabric of the West was being destroyed.

“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,” he said at one point.

It essentially amounted to a lecture and a warning to Europe, which has seen waves of migrants from Africa and the Middle East in recent years, that his approach of sharply curbing migrants from entering the United States was the only way to preserve national heritage.

“Once we started detaining and deporting everyone who crossed the border — and removing illegal aliens from the United States — they simply stopped coming,” he said.

He said other leaders, particularly in Europe, would be wise to follow his lead.

“You’re doing it because you want to be nice. You want to be politically correct, and you’re destroying your heritage,” he said.

Climate change the ‘greatest con job’

Trump scoffed at past predictions warning of global disaster from climate change and urged other nations to scrap green energy initiatives intended to reduce carbon output.

Climate change, he said, was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

The vast majority of climate scientists have concluded climate change is happening, and that it is mainly caused by fossil fuel pollution. Already, the world is seeing its effects: Floods are becoming more extreme and deadly, droughts are more widespread and severe, and heat waves are more dangerous.

Trump was having none of it.

“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong,” he claimed. “They were made by stupid people.”

The president also claimed green energy policies allow countries without such restrictions — particularly in the developing world — to make money while the US lags behind.

“The primary effect of these brutal green energy policies has not been to help the environment but to redistribute manufacturing and industrial activity from developed countries that follow the insane rules that are put down to polluting countries that break the rules and are making a fortune,” Trump said.

No sign of progress on Ukraine or Gaza

Trump offered little new information when discussing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, two conflicts he once said would be easy to resolve but continue to rage eight months into his term.

He lamented the growing momentum for a two-state solution at the United Nations this week as a “reward” for Hamas, reaffirming calls for a ceasefire and end to the conflict in Gaza that have so far proved elusive.

He acknowledged ending the war in Ukraine had been more difficult than he expected, saying his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin hadn’t translated into effective peace negotiations.

But instead of directing his ire toward Moscow, Trump berated European nations for continuing purchases of Russian energy products.

“It’s embarrassing to them, and it was very embarrassing to them when I found out about it,” Trump said. “They have to immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia. Otherwise, we’re all wasting a lot of time.”

European nations have dramatically reduced their oil purchases from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, but continue to purchase natural gas. Two countries, Hungary and Slovakia, make up the bulk of European purchases of Russian oil.

Trump did identify China and India as the “primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil,” but accused European nations of also contributing.

In a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of UNGA later Tuesday, Trump said he believes NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace. The comment is notable as the defense alliance confronts the potential for an expansion of the war, although Trump stopped short of saying the United States would join in the effort.

The US president also suggested he might speak to his “friend,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, about stopping purchases of Russian oil.

Broken equipment — and a broken institution

Trump used a broken escalator and his inoperable teleprompter to underscore his deeper complaints about the United Nations.

“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” he said. (When he was arriving to the UN building on New York’s East River earlier, the escalator stopped as he was riding up.)

But Trump’s gripes with the UN went well beyond its malfunctioning equipment.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” he asked during his speech. And he added later: “For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”

Trump is hardly the only one who has questioned the efficacy of the UN, which has seen its relevance wane dramatically over the last decade. A gridlocked Security Council and layers of rigid bureaucracy have made it difficult for the body to live up to its objective of promoting global peace and stability.

Trump, however, has gone further in eroding its stature, slashing the money the US spends on the institution and cutting funding for foreign humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations. He’s also withdrawn from the UN’s cultural, health and human rights arms.

On Tuesday, he also seemed irked that the UN had ignored his efforts to end global conflicts.

“I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal,” he said. “All I got from the United Nations was an escalator, that on the way up, stopped right in the middle.”

Veering off-script

Trump’s speech began without a teleprompter, but as he meandered into various tangents, it seemed like he didn’t really need one.

He went into digressions about his crime reduction efforts in US cities, Barack Obama’s carbon footprint, his own stymied efforts to renovate the UN’s headquarters, and the efficacy of windmills.

“We don’t want cows anymore. I guess they want to kill all the cows,” he said at one point, without explanation.

If there was a through line, it was his criticism of how most of the world — and the UN itself — is handling matters, and an accounting of how his approach is better. Even for Trump, however, the detours were striking.

“In Asia, they dump much of their garbage right into the ocean,” he intoned at another point.

His audience of global delegates didn’t offer any audible reaction, beyond laughing at his description of meeting Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva backstage.

He went well beyond the 15-minute limit for leaders’ speeches, though he would hardly be the only world leader to extend past his slotted time.

This story has been updated with additional comments from Trump.

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