President Donald Trump’s address to the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September can be seen in starkly different lights: for supporters, it was Trumpism in its purest form; for critics, it was Trumpism unplugged. Regardless of perspective, Trump’s speech stood out as one of the clearest, rawest and most unabashed expositions of his worldview and ideology. Angered by a broken escalator and a teleprompter that disrupted his visit and speech, President Trump attacked the United Nations, questioning its effectiveness in resolving conflicts and pointing to the gridlock in the Security Council.

“The UN has such tremendous potential but it is not even coming close to living up to that potential.” Its strongly worded letters represented empty words that do not end wars, he insisted. The UN is supposed to stop invasion, not create them and not finance them, he asserted. His critics, however, hold Trump to be both the cause and the symptom for the UN’s ineffectiveness. This is because Trump clearly believes global crises are best resolved by powerful men and countries sitting together and hammering out deals without any reference to the UN for working out collective solutions.

Advertisement

Clearly, President Trump was not in a good mood at the UN. He took potshots at all his opponents one by one, sparing none, reserving praise exclusively for the United States and himself. The USA is living through a golden age, he announced. Reserving his most savage remarks for Europe, he said: “Europe is in serious trouble. I love Europe, I love the people of Europe. And I hate to see it being........

© The Statesman