5 lines from Trump’s UN speech

Whether you’re a fan or otherwise, Donald Trump’s UN General Assembly remarks had plenty of his trademark…

• drama (“your countries are going to hell”)

• bromance (“at least for about 39 seconds, we had excellent chemistry”)

• real estate (“you walk on terrazzo, do you notice that?”), and

• fire (“these are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter” — both devices failed him on the day).

But when the leader of the world’s largest military and economy addresses the UN, the world still listens. So here are our five top quotes:

1. “In a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars.”

The president, who ran on a peacemaker platform, has used this line before, referring to his claims around i) Cambodia-Thailand, ii) India-Pakistan, iii) Israel-Iran, iv) Armenia-Azerbaijan, v) Congo-Rwanda, vi) Serbia-Kosovo, and vii) Egypt-Ethiopia.   

Folks will of course test the details, but we’d just note Trump’s list reflects a key truth: even a US president re-elected to focus closer to home is now confronted with a world demanding more of America’s attention, as the only nation still with a global reach.

2. “The United Nations has tremendous, tremendous potential. But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential.”

Just about everyone would agree with that diagnosis. Even (especially?!) UN officials. The disagreement is more around the cure.

Mirroring his approach back home, President Trump has sought to squeeze any UN bloat (and mission creep) by slashing funding — others have followed suit for fiscal reasons.

But the result is the UN is now facing 3,000 job cuts and $500M in budget cuts. And for an organisation confronting a fraying word order with a smaller budget than the NYPD ($3.7B vs $5.7B), that’ll hurt. Sure, it’ll drive some much-needed efficiency. But it’ll also mean (as the president himself saw) you get escalators and teleprompters that don’t work.

3. “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” 

Ok we’re cheating here because the president tweeted this after his UNGA address, which did include this brief aside about the Russo-Ukraine war, btw: “Of the seven wars that I stopped, I thought it would be the easiest because of my relationship with President Putin.”

Anyway, maybe it’s just another tweet — the president makes no mention of past US deadlines, for example. But for him to now suddenly ditch his persistent line that Putin can’t be beaten and that Ukraine can never get its land back? Wow. Russian stocks felt it too, immediately plunging across the board.

So what changed? Maybe it’s Putin’s de-facto mockery of Trump’s ceasefire calls, or something from Trump’s meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky after his speech. But our sense is this message probably reflects the briefings Trump is reportedly now getting from his advisors, confirming something we’ve been saying for a while now: sooner or later, Putin is screwed.

And President Trump has made no secret he likes to back winners, not losers. So maybe Ukraine’s tenacious self-defence has now inverted Trump’s view on who is who?

4. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders”

The US president dedicated a chunk of his speech to undocumented migration, describing it as “the number one political issue of our time”. And Trump himself is arguably evidence of that — immigration issues not only played a key role in his two election victories; it’s actually still his policy with the highest approval (though down at 42%).

And yet, Trump’s target audience in Europe has changed since his first UN address in 2017, with most capitals now reflecting broadly similar strains of populist and nationalist public sentiment, even if individual leaders might choose their words differently.

• “It’s the greatest con job perpetrated on the world” 

Two things about the president weighing back in on climate change here: first, America’s energy transition now has its own momentum, with renewable investment up (even in Texas) despite any DC headwinds. These are cigar-chomping (not tree-hugging) decisions.

But second, that momentum is also getting accelerated by geopolitics: the US-China tech race needs chips, which need energy. That’s why Silicon Valley is now scrambling for every joule it can get, with most of Big Tech’s new energy contracts now tied to renewables — at this point, Zuck & Co aren’t doing this for the PR points. They want to win.