UN cites safety mechanism after Trump’s criticism over stopped escalator at General Assembly

“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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an X post. She later repeated the warning on Fox News, adding, “I know that we have people, including United States Secret Service, who are looking into this to try to get to the bottom of it.”

The UN on Wednesday said the escalator’s safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects from being caught or pulled into the gearing. “The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above,” the UN explained.

“Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor. 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,” the UN added.

Trump on Tuesday also experienced a teleprompter malfunction at the start of his address, which he complained about both at the time and later in the day.

“The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden halt as we were riding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the UN, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty,” Trump posted on his social media platform.

The UN has not provided further details regarding the teleprompter malfunction.