The world needs a Maga approach, Trump tells UN

He pours scorn on migration and climate change, and claims he has ended seven wars

- Bhagyashree Garekar

He offered no new ideas on resolving the Gaza conflict or the Ukraine war in the course of a meandering 56-minute speech that sounded like a stump speech made on the campaign trail in 2024.

A faulty teleprompter at the podium, coming on top of a jerky escalator ride to the venue, gave Mr Trump the handle to launch something of a tirade against the UN, which he said was “creating new problems for us to solve”.

More than 140 world leaders are gathered at the UN General Assembly this week to discuss, among other things, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a plan to cut carbon emissions to fight climate change.

The US President devoted almost 10 minutes to uncontrolled migration, which he called the “number one political issue of our time”.

He said the UN had in 2024 budgeted several hundred million dollars to support more than half a million migrants entering the US. “The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them and not finance them,” he said.

The UN budgeted US$372 million (S$477 million) in cash assistance in 2024 to support an estimated 624,000 migrants journeying into the US, according to the President.

“You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again,” Mr Trump told the assembled leaders, pressing his Make America Great Again (Maga) approach on the rest of the world.

Mr Trump singled out Europe. “You want to be nice. You want to be politically correct. And you are destroying your heritage,” he said in remarks addressed to European nations for policies that he said were allowing “illegal aliens” to “pour in”.

“If you don’t stop people that you have never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail,” he said.

Most of the US allied nations in Europe are majority white, with recent immigration waves from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.