President Trump and the first lady had a pretty embarrassing moment at the United Nations this week when the escalator they were using suddenly stopped, and it’s looking like it might have been deliberate. This all happened right as they were getting on it ahead of the president’s address to the UN General Assembly in New York. While the circumstances seem immature on the UN’s part, Fox News took it way too far.
The issue comes from when Fox News Host Jesse Waters came up with his idea of what to do in the situation. He said that these issues were intentional and that it was an “insurrection,” which is strange to hear from the republican side, who didn’t think January 6 was an insurrection, but an escalator stopping is. He then said, “What we need to do is either leave the UN or bomb it,” which he said with an incredibly serious face.
It’s the most unhinged response to what could be a prank or just a coincidence. A commenter on X gave a response that makes you wonder about where the priorities are for Fox News and the republicans who took this too seriously, “So we’re killing homeless and bombing the UN. But the left are the violent ones?”
The white house jumps to bombing the UN over what could be a prank
According to The Independent, the UN said it was just a technical malfunction, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime to suggest it was sabotage, claiming the Secret Service is even looking into it. According to a report from The Times of London, UN staffers had been “joking that they may turn off the escalators” and “tell him they ran out of money so he has to walk up the stairs.”
Leavitt shared a snippet of the article on X, and during her interview with Jesse Watters, she was asked if the incident was an act of “sabotage,” to which she replied, “That’s definitely what it appears to be to me.” She then went on to add that “there was some concerning reporting over the weekend that UN globalist staffers were basically plotting to set up the President of the United States.” This jump to aggression is coming from an administration that wants a Nobel Peace Prize.
So we’re killing homeless and bombing the UN. But the left are the violent ones?
— Burning Bridges (@sdflbb) September 23, 2025
Leavitt also said that after the escalator incident, “then it was the teleprompter.” The press secretary mentioned that conservative commentator Katie Pavlich claimed the audio for the president’s speech was “much lower and different” than the previous speaker’s.
“When you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence to me,” Leavitt said. She then stated that the Secret Service and other agencies are looking into this to “get to the bottom of it,” adding, “If we find that these were UN 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, and I will personally see to it.”
According to Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Trump’s own videographer might have been the one to blame. Dujarric said that the U.S. delegation’s videographer ran ahead of the president and may have accidentally triggered the safety stop mechanism at the top of the escalator. “The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects from accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing,” Dujarric said in a statement.
So, Trump’s own administration may have caused a problem, tried to blame someone else in a tantrum, and went too far, which is unsurprising if true.
