President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to allege triple sabotage, including his escalator mishap, at the United Nations General Assembly. The president declared that he would write to the United Nations Secretary-General and demand an investigation and arrest of all those involved. After an inquiry, however, the UN found it was just a routine safety measure.
Trump’s statement on Truth Social was hardly surprising this time, as the White House Press Secretary and Fox News had already been echoing similar claims. But the president managed to up the ante with his theorizing about what might have happened on the escalator had he and First Lady Melania Trump not been “holding the handrail tightly.”
The president fears that if they hadn’t, he would have fallen face-first onto the steel steps. Trump suggested that this was a coordinated plot, coupling it with the fact that his teleprompter failed for the first 15 minutes of his speech and that there was an apparent sound malfunction in the auditorium. It was during this speech that he shared his thoughts on China causing air pollution in the US and why he should have won the contract to renovate the UN headquarters some years back.
According to NBC, it only took the UN 24 hours to respond to the president’s escalator saga. The Secretary-General’s spokesman explained in a statement: “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 from accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”
It’s highly unlikely Trump will be satisfied with an explanation that blames his own videographer (who was walking backwards on the escalator to film the president and thus triggered the mechanism) for the escalator jam. Especially since the UN still hasn’t addressed his other complaints about his speech. Another Truth Social post may be looming — or perhaps Governor Gavin Newsom will beat him to it with another satirical jab.
People on X were certainly not fans of Trump taking to Truth Social to vent about this ordeal in the first place. One user noted how the conversation has shifted from world war anxieties to fighting escalators. Another joked that the Trump administration should just push to have escalators banned from future UN events — after all, why stop at comedians.
Forget WWIII, we’re now fighting… escalators
— Zhai Xiang (@ZhaiXiang5) September 25, 2025
I agree this is sabotage. If guilty, the escalator should be banned from future UN events. Justice must be served
— Zhai Xiang (@ZhaiXiang5) September 25, 2025
An escalator malfunction shouldn’t be dominating this much time for the White House, but it’s a telling indictment of just how thin-skinned the president is. It’s one thing to struggle with negative commentary about your leadership, but it’s another entirely when you can’t even handle the everyday inconveniences the rest of the world endures. At the end of the day, it’s just an escalator.
And yet, reports circulated even before the escalator stopped that some UN officials had joked about switching it off on Trump, quipping that his funding cuts meant they couldn’t afford to keep it running. Even that — for a man who relishes his vicious vindictiveness — could just as easily have been taken with good humor.
