Secret Service in sabotage probe over Donald Trump UN escalator mishap

The Secret Service are set to investigate claims that Donald Trump's United Nations escalator mishap was no accident.

America's federal law enforcement agency will probe sabotage claims after the President and First Lady Melania Trump were left red faced as his spiky UN speech got off to a chaotic start. The faulty teleprompter left the pair looking around bewildered as they were momentarily stranded.

The malfunctioning escalator at the UN's New York City headquarters drew President Trump's frustration on Tuesday, and a series of unfortunately-timed glitches have raised suspicions further. Last week, The Sunday Times reported that UN workers joked about turning off a moving staircase.

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Trump didn't let the incident slide in an acid-tongued address, claiming the failure could have resulted in injury to his wife. He said: “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 both stood.”

The 79-year-old didn't stop there, and complained: “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.”

A UN spokesman said that all three incidents were genuine mishaps but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt would not defuse the situation. First, she posted on X: "If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately."

Later, speaking to Fox News, she said: "When you put all of this together, it doesn't look like a coincidence to me. And if we find that these were UN staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up, literally trip up, the president and the first lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people."

Farhan Aziz Haq, deputy Spokesperson of the UN Secretary General, insisted sabotage was wide of the mark. He said: "The safety mechanism was inadvertently triggered by someone who was ahead of the president on the escalator. The escalator was immediately reset and is in operation.

“Regarding the teleprompter, we have no comment since we don’t operate that teleprompter. The interpretation audio was heard when a non-official interpreter pressed the wrong button, which briefly allowed a non-UN interpreter to be heard,” he continued.

Trump unleashed a verbal volley at all corners of the world but reserved plenty of criticism for the the hosts. He went on to slam the UN for not helping him with any of his foreign policy work - continuing his claim that he 'ended seven wars' since returning to office.

He said: "The UN has such tremendous potential. I've always said it. 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."

But he failed to make any mention of the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Trump instead pushed for Hamas to release hostages, accusing them of "repeatedly reject[ing] reasonable offers to make peace” since the October 7 attack. He briefly acknowledged that "we have to stop the war in Gaza immediately", before repeating "We've got to get the hostages back. We want all 20 back. We don't want two and four."

He then turned his attention to immigration in Europe , launching a tirade and urging allies to follow his hardline US approach. "We've taken bold action to swiftly shut down uncontrolled migration. Once we started detaining and deporting everyone who crossed the border and removing illegal aliens from the United States. They simply stopped coming."

Branding immigration throughout Europe as part of the "globalist migration agenda," he warned: "It's time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. Your countries are going to hell."