This is the full text of US President Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 23, 2025.

Thank you very much, very much appreciated.

And I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter because the teleprompter is not working. I feel very happy to be up here with you, nevertheless, and that way you speak more from the heart. I can only say that whoever’s operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.

Hello, Madam First Lady. Thank you very much for being here, and Madam President, Mr. Secretary-General, First Lady of the United States, distinguished delegates, ambassadors, and world leaders.

Six years have passed since I last stood in this grand hall and addressed a world that was prosperous and at peace in my first term. Since that day, the guns of war have shattered the peace I forged on two continents. An era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.

And here in the United States, four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters.

One year ago, our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close.

America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the Earth. This is indeed the golden age of America.

We are rapidly reversing the economic calamity we inherited from the previous administration, including ruinous price increases and record-setting inflation, inflation like we’ve never had before. Under my leadership, energy costs are down, gasoline prices are down, grocery prices are down. Mortgage rates are down and inflation has been defeated.

The only thing that’s up is the stock market, which just hit a record high. In fact, it hit a record high 48 times in the last short period of time. Growth is surging. Manufacturing is booming. The stock market, as I said, is doing better than it’s ever done. And all of you in this room benefit by that. Almost everybody. And importantly, workers’ wages are rising at the fastest pace in more than 60 years. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

In four years of [former US] President [Joe] Biden, we had less than $1 trillion of new investment into the United States. In just eight months since I took office, we have secured commitments and money already paid for $17 trillion. Think of it, four years less than a trillion; eight months, much more than $17 trillion is being invested in the United States and is now pouring in from all parts of the world.

We’ve implemented the largest tax cuts in American history and the largest regulation cuts in American history, making this once and again the best country on earth to do business, and many of the people in this room are investing in America, and it’s turned out to be an awfully good investment during this eight-month period.

In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world. We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.

On our southern border, we have successfully repelled a colossal invasion, and for the last four months, and that’s four months in a row, the number of illegal aliens admitted and entering our country has been zero. Hard to believe, because if you look back just a year ago, it was millions and millions of people pouring in from all over the world, from prisons, from mental institutions, drug dealers, all over the world they came. They just poured into our country with the ridiculous open border policy of the Biden administration.

Our message is very simple. If you come illegally into the United States, you’re going to jail or you’re going back to where you came from, or perhaps even further than that. You know what that means.

I want to thank the country of El Salvador for the successful and professional job they’ve done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country. And it was under the previous administration that the number became record-setting, and they’re all being taken out. We have no choice. And other countries have no choice because other countries are in the exact same situation with immigration. It’s destroying your country and you have to do something about it.

On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. Do you think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughing stock all over the world.

At the NATO summit in June, virtually all NATO members formally committed to increased defense spending at my request from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP, making our alliance far stronger and more powerful than it was ever before.

In May, I traveled to the Middle East to visit my friends and rebuild our partnerships in the Gulf and those valued relationships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE [United Arab Emirates], and other countries are now, I believe, closer than ever before. My administration has negotiated one historic trade deal after another, including with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and many, many others.

Likewise, in a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars. They said they were unendable. You’re never gonna get them solved. Some were going for 31 years, two of them, 31, think of it, 31 years. One was 36 years, one was 28 years. I ended seven wars. And in all cases, they were raging with countless, thousands of people, being killed.

This includes Cambodia and Thailand; Kosovo and Serbia; the Congo and Rwanda, a vicious, violent war that was; Pakistan and India; Israel and Iran; Egypt and Ethiopia; and Armenia and Azerbaijan. It included all of them. No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that. And I did it in just seven months. It’s never happened before. There’s never been anything like that. Very honored to have done it.

It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.

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’re both still. 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. Thank you very much. And by the way, it’s working now, just went on. Thank you. I think I should just do it the other way; it’s easier. Thank you very much.

I didn’t think of it at the time because I was too busy working to save millions of lives – that is, the saving and stopping of these wars — but later I realized that the United Nations wasn’t there for us. They weren’t there. I thought of it really after the fact, not during these negotiations, which were not easy.

That being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential for the most part, at least for now. All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.

Now, after ending all of these wars and also earlier negotiating the Abraham Accords, which is a very big thing for which our country received no credit, never receives credit. Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements. But for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with their mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and unglorious wars.

What I care about is not winning prizes at saving lives. We saved millions and millions of lives with the seven wars. And we have others that we’re working on, and you know that.

Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything, it would be beautiful. I used to talk about, I’m going to give you marble floors, they’re going to give you terrazzo. I’m gonna give you the best of everything. You’re gonna have mahogany walls, they’re gonna give you plastic.

But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time, which actually produced a far inferior product. And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction and that their building concepts were so wrong and the product that they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly. It was going to cost them a fortune, and I said, ‘and wait till you see the overruns.’ Well, I turned out to be right – they had massive cost overruns and spent between $2 [billion] and $4 billion on the building and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them. You walk on terrazzo, do you notice that?

As far as I’m concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck on the escalator, they still haven’t finished the job. They still haven’t finished, that was years ago. The project was so corrupt that Congress actually asked me to testify before them on the tremendous waste of money because it turned out that they had no idea what it was, but they knew it was anywhere between $2 [billion] and $4 billion as opposed to $500 million with a guarantee, but they had no idea and I said it cost much more than $5 billion.

Unfortunately, many things in the United Nations are happening just like that, but on an even much bigger scale, much, much bigger, very sad to see whether the UN can manage to play a productive role.

I’ve come here today to offer the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world

I’ve come here today to offer the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world. It’s a world that we’ll be much happier with, a dramatically better future is within our reach. But to get there, we must reject the failed approaches of the past and work together to confront some of the greatest threats in history.

There is no more serious danger to our planet today than the most powerful and destructive weapons ever devised by man, of which the United States, as you know, has many. Just as I did in my first term, I’ve made containing these threats a top priority, starting with the nation of Iran.

The world’s number one sponsor of terror can never be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapon

My position is very simple. The world’s number one sponsor of terror can never be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapon. That’s why, shortly after taking office, I sent the so-called supreme leader a letter making a generous offer. I extended a pledge of full cooperation in exchange for a suspension of Iran’s nuclear program. The regime’s answer was to continue their constant threats to their neighbors and US interests throughout the region and some great countries that are right nearby.

Today, many of Iran’s former military commanders, — in fact, I can say almost all of them — are no longer with us. They’re dead. And three months ago in Operation Midnight Hammer, seven American B-2 bombers dropped the 14 30,000-pound-each bombs on Iran’s key nuclear facilities, totally obliterating everything. No other country on earth could have done what we did. No other county has the equipment to do what we do. We have the greatest weapons on earth. We hate to use them, but we did something that for 22 years, people wanted to do.

With Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity demolished, I immediately brokered an end to the 12-day war, as it’s called,........

© The Times of Israel