U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz vowed that “we’re going to clean house” at the UN as he and reform envoy Jeff Bartos walked outside UN headquarters in Manhattan, blasting the body as “bloated and bureaucratic” while touting more than a billion dollars in early savings and what he called “DOGEing” — his push to apply Trump-style waste-cutting to the UN system.
In a video posted Tuesday on X, Waltz said President Donald Trump has “made it clear the UN has a lot of potential,” but stressed that “We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwaters” even as Washington forces long-avoided reforms on an institution he says has been allowed to grow bloated for decades.
“Hey, so we’re just walking out of that building there, the UN headquarters, and we really should be talking about the reforms that we’re driving,” Waltz began, pointing behind him at the East River complex. “We’ve got President Trump and his leadership — the DOGEing that we’re doing.”
“The United States pays 25 percent of everything that happens there,” he said, highlighting that in “just a few months” the administration has already “driven a 25 percent cut to global peacekeeping,” a 15 percent cut to the UN’s regular budget, and is now targeting “2,600 UN bureaucrats that we’re going to cut.”
“Again, American taxpayers pay a quarter of all of this,” Waltz added before handing off to “Ambassador Jeff Bartos, a good friend, and President Trump’s pick to reform this entire place.”
Bartos, the U.S. Representative for UN Management and Reform, said the team’s mandate is straightforward: slash waste and force accountability.
“We’ve only been here two months, and thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the leadership of Ambassador Waltz and the whole team here in the U.S., we’ve already saved over a billion dollars in UN spending,” Bartos said. “A billion dollars in two months — and we’re just getting started.”
To illustrate the UN’s unchecked waste, Bartos ran through some of the recent expenses the reform team is targeting.
“They spent $360 million last year on meetings, conferences, and reports — $360 million,” he emphasized. “Over $70 million in tuition reimbursement for colleges and universities for UN employees.”
He then tied the financial waste to the UN’s political behavior.
“The unconscionable bias against the United States and our ally Israel, which has run rampant here for 80 years — that’s coming to an end thanks to President Trump and the leadership of the United States,” Bartos said. “And we’re just getting started.”
Bartos added that countries across the developing and developed world are privately signaling support.
“We have a coalition of countries all over the world that are eager to get on the reform bandwagon,” he said. “And I look forward, over the next year and over the next three years, we’re going to make this place fit for purpose. We’re going to make it work, and we’re going to be proud of our investment here in the UN.”
Waltz closed the clip by insisting the goal is not to abandon the UN outright but to force it back toward its original mission.
“Yeah, look, the President has made it clear the UN has a lot of potential,” he said. “We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwaters, but we have to reform, and we have to clean house. We have to make this place work better.”
“We need one place in the world where everybody can come and talk and diplomacy can work,” Waltz continued. “But it can’t be so bloated and bureaucratic. We’re going to clean house — and President Trump’s going to lead the way.”
The DOGEing Waltz referenced — a term that originated with the former Department of Government Efficiency and has since become shorthand for rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse — is now being applied to Turtle Bay’s multibillion-dollar bureaucracy, from personnel costs to overlapping agencies and perks.
Earlier this month, Bartos used a UN “common system” meeting to warn that the institution is burning through roughly $16 billion a year on staff compensation across its agencies and programs, with UN employees out-earning civil servants “in every Member State, including the United States” and receiving additional allowances and benefits that compound the problem. Policy analysts have noted that these inflated salaries and perks cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually — a structure Bartos called “unsustainable.”
The new video also builds on Waltz’s earlier reform agenda detailed in a Breitbart News exclusive filmed inside the General Assembly hall, where he explained that President Trump is withholding U.S. funding until the UN delivers real cuts. In that interview, Waltz said UN Secretary-General António Guterres — under explicit American pressure — agreed to a 15 percent reduction in his own budget, an 18 percent cut to overall personnel, and a 25 percent reduction in peacekeeping operations.
Waltz has been previewing this fight since his fiery Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year, where he pledged to “Make the U.N. Great Again,” blasted the body’s “radical politicization,” and laid out plans to confront Chinese influence, dismantle anti-Israel mechanisms, and force reforms to peacekeeping mandates that have drifted for decades without results.
He warned at the time that the UN’s revenue has quadrupled in 20 years without any corresponding increase in global peace, even as the United States funds more than 183 countries combined. He also highlighted the UN’s decades-long bias against Israel, including lopsided resolutions and agencies like UNRWA that he said enable extremism.
Now, with Bartos alongside him and Trump back in the Oval Office, Waltz is positioning the new cuts as the first step in a broader multi-year restructuring — one aimed squarely at bureaucrats and entrenched political machinery rather than American workers.
“This is really pushing it, kicking and screaming, back to that original vision,” Waltz said in the earlier interview. On Tuesday, he distilled the mission to a single line as he walked away from the UN’s glass tower:
“We’re going to clean house — and we’re just getting started.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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