By Scott Raffan
Donald Trump is unique in his lack of dogmatic ideology throughout his life and his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on the 24th September backs this up. It was filled with all of MAGA’s favourite wacky fairy tales from “Sharia law in London” to COVID being a result of Chinese biological weapon practice going wrong.
President Trump began with a typically bold claim, saying, “I ended seven wars”. Fact-checkers have, of course, had a field day pointing out this blatant lie. For example, he claims that he prevented a war between Serbia and Kosovo, both of which had denied that war was coming.
“Wasted potential” was the President’s thought on the United Nations, and provided him no help in the seven conflicts he ended and hinted that they should be thanking him as a great peacemaker.
A lot of the speech you could almost predict with the typical Trumpian anti-establishment talking points. The one real surprise was his U-turn regarding Ukraine. Just seven months ago, he and his vice president pounced on Ukrainian Premier Volodymyr Zelensky, with him screaming at his peer, “You do not hold the cards”, and telling him to enter peace talks with an expectation of territorial concessions.
Donald Trump now believes that Ukraine, with the support of NATO and the UN, can win back every bit of the land they’ve lost to the “paper tiger” of Russia. This dramatic reversal is perhaps the most impactful segment of his speech, with the rest being a typical Trump speech.
Trump started off in a foul mood, and any hope of the U.S. president building bridges was lost from the start by each nation’s delegates. He complained of the escalator breaking while he was ascending on it and he had to revert to old school notes on a lectern for his debate as the teleprompter was not working – he saw these as both deliberate attempts to undermine and humiliate him saying “all I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle …and then a teleprompter that didn’t work. These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”
He indulged his strange fixation on Sadiq Khan’s running of Britain’s capital city, saying “now they want to go to Sharia law,” which is obviously fictitious, and provoked Mayor Khan to light-heartedly quip that he thinks the President has a ‘crush’ on him. This is just the latest of several instances of Trump, in reflection of his once close ally, Elon Musk, in their obsession with the trivial domestic politics of other countries.
Donald Trump also launched a barrage of attacks against immigration, particularly in Europe, while taking the time to brag about his strong border policy, which fact checkers have, of course, had fun with. He warned of immigration ‘destroying your heritage’ in Europe, which Keir Starmer is sure to find unhelpful in uniting his currently disunited kingdom.
Donald Trump’s UN speech just goes to show his complete lack of love for the international community and its forums, which the rest of the world generally reciprocates. It shows he views America as the strongest nation and totally capable of shaping the world on its own.
