The United States Secret Service (USSS) federal law agency will investigate whether President Donald Trump was intentionally sabotaged by United Nations staffers after they reportedly “joked” about stopping the escalator before this week’s meeting of the General Assembly in New York City.
While President Trump made light of the apparent mishap of the U.N. escalator shutting off as he and First Lady Melania Trump stepped onto it on Tuesday morning, the issue may not be such a laughing matter, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt revealing that the Secret Service will investigate the matter.
Before the 80th meeting of the General Assembly, London’s Sunday Times reported that some U.N. staffers had joked that they might turn off the escalators and elevators upon Trump’s arrival and claim that they had run out of money, in reference to the administration’s cuts to funding for the global institution.
Should the shut-off of the escalators turn out to have been a deliberate act, it may have presented a severe security risk by briefly stopping Trump in his tracks, particularly in light of the two assassination attempts on the President’s life and the recent assassination of key Trump ally Charlie Kirk.
Commenting to Fox News on Tuesday evening, Press Secretary Leavitt said: “I put out a statement earlier when there was concerning reporting over the weekend from the London Times, as you pointed out, that UN globalist staffers were basically plotting to set up the president of the United States.
“And first it was the escalator, then it was the teleprompter, and then Katie Pavlich from Townhall … noticed that the audio inside of the room was much lower and different for the president of the United States than the previous speakers.
“So when you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence to me. And I know that we have people, including the United States Secret Service, who are looking into this to try to get to the bottom of it.
“And if we find that these were UN staffers who were purposely 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.”
The United Nations has denied that the escalator incident was a deliberate act, with spokesman Stephane Dujarric suggesting that the escalator may have been stopped as a result of a videographer from the U.S. delegation inadvertently triggering a “safety function”. He added that a U.N. technician quickly restarted the escalator after climbing to the second floor.
“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. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above,” Dujarric said per The Times.
Regardless, the escalator and teleprompter malfunctions provided fodder for President Trump during his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, warning that whoever was operating the teleprompter was in “big trouble”.
“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen. But she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape. We both stood,” Trump said.
“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. Thank you very much. And by the way, it’s working now. Just went on. Thank you.”
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