The United Nations claims that a videographer may have accidentally been responsible for the abrupt escalator shutdown on Wednesday when President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrived for the General Assembly in New York City.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News she believes the president was sabotaged, and emphasized the Secret Service is “looking into” the matter.
The U.N. has claimed the escalator stoppage was not a deliberate act. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric claimed a videographer with the U.S. delegation could have accidentally triggered a safety feature at the top of the escalator, causing it to stop running, as London’s Times reported:
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.
On Tuesday afternoon, Leavitt notably shared a screenshot from a Sunday Times article published last weekend about how U.N. staffers reportedly mused about sabotaging the escalator for the president’s arrival.
Leavitt noted during an appearance on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime that the U.S. Secret Service was “looking into” the matter and said the escalator issue and subsequent teleprompter problems that occurred during Trump’s address do not appear coincidental.
“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,” she said.
“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,” she added.
“And if we find that these were U.N. 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,” Leavitt declared.
Trump ripped the U.N. over the teleprompter and escalator issues during his speech.
“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,” he said.
The Associated Press cited an anonymous source, described as a “U.N. official,” who claimed that Trump’s team was running the teleprompter during his speech.
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