Speaking in a fiery post on X and an interview on Fox News Channel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sounded off on the United Nations and accused someone within it of trying to sabotage Trump after an incident in which the escalator he and Melania got on stalled, slightly knocking the First Lady off balance.
For reference, Leavitt’s comments came on Tuesday, September 23, the same day as President Donald Trump spoke at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and sounded off on everything from the UN’s ineffectiveness at establishing peace to its funding of invasions by pushing refugees and asylum seekers on Western countries.
During the day’s events, the president and First Lady Melania Trump got on an escalator in the UN’s New York City headquarters. As they did so, the machine suddenly screeched to a halt, and they had to walk up it. Leavitt and others contended that the stalled elevator was a sign of deliberate sabotage.
Posting about the matter on X, Leavitt took a screenshot of a Times of London article from Saturday in which the paper reported that UN staffers were “joking” about stopping the escalators. She said, captioning the post, “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.”
Following up on that in comments to FNC’s Jesse Watters, Leavitt said, “That’s definitely what it appears to be to me. There’s was some concerning reporting over the weekend from the London Times… that U.N. globalist staffers were basically plotting to set up the President of the United States.”
She added that the Secret Service is looking into the matter and will be investigating the UN, saying, “If we find that these were U.N. staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up, literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well there better be accountability for those people.”
Watch her here:
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Also angrily commenting on the matter was Johnny MAGA, the huge pro-Trump X account. He noted that Melania had been knocked somewhat off balance by the incident, and demanded that it be properly investigated, saying, “In all seriousness, if the stopped escalator was an act of sabotage, whoever is responsible must be severely punished. Melania lost her balance and had to quickly grab the rails. The President and First Lady could have fallen and been injured.”
Watch the incident here:
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, however, insisted that nothing malicious had happened. He said, as Fox News Digital reported, “Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor.”
He continued, “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. The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video