UN Spokesman Says Trump’s Team at Fault for Escalator and Teleprompter Snafus

Screenshot via Fox News.

When President Donald Trump encountered technical difficulties with the escalator, and then the teleprompter, during his visit to United Nations headquarters Tuesday, the White House was quick to blame UN employees and demand an investigation. According to a UN spokesman, however, the Trump administration should be looking for the culprits within their own ranks.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were at the UN building Tuesday, where the president would deliver an hour-long speech to the UN General Assembly that lambasted other member nations and included a number of false claims that were swiftly fact-checked.

When the president and his wife arrived at the UN building, they walked towards the escalator, but it stopped suddenly right after they stepped on it. After pausing for a few moments, they continued walking up the escalator that was now temporarily stairs.

During Trump’s speech, the teleprompter was also faulty, and he complained about having “a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the UN, demanding an investigation and saying if any UN employees were found to be responsible, they should be fired. Tuesday evening, Leavitt went on Fox News and repeated these accusations, agreeing with host Jesse Watters that the problems with the escalator and teleprompter appeared to be “sabotage” by “UN globalist staffers.”

A report by the AP, however, included a comment from a UN spokesman directly contradicting the claim about the escalator, and putting the blame squarely on Trump’s own team.

According to a statement by UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, the problem was caused when a videographer who was accompanying Trump and the rest of the U.S. delegation ran ahead of the president and accidentally set off a “stop mechanism” safety device at the top of the elevator.

“The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing,” said Dujarric. “The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function.”

Dujarric added that the UN’s escalator technician was on site and was able to “reset the escalator as soon as the [U.S.] delegation had climbed up to the second floor,” and 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.

Regarding the teleprompter, a UN official “speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue” said the fault for those problems was with Trump’s team as well, because the White House was operating the teleprompter.

The AP’s report did note that there was a kernel to truth to the White House’s claims; the UN building has had escalator malfunctions and the UN offices in New York City and Geneva “have intermittently turned off elevators and escalators as part of steps to save money because of a ‘liquidity crisis’” that is “due in part to delays in funding from the United States, which is the top donor of the world body.”

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