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UN escalator 'intentionally stopped' during Trump, Melania's visit? Karoline Leavitt calls for investigation
Karoline Leavitt has urged UN officials to investigate after an escalator at headquarters abruptly stopped when Donald Melania Trump stepped on it.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has urged United Nations officials to conduct an investigation after an escalator at headquarters abruptly stopped when President Donald Trump and Melania Trump stepped on it Tuesday morning, September 23. The moment was captured on camera, when the escalator in the entrance hall to the UN building in New York stalled as soon as the US President and his wife stepped on it.
“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,” Leavitt wrote on X, citing a Times of London report claiming staffers had been overheard joking that they would stop the escalator so Trump would have to walk to the hall to give his speech.
“The safety mechanism was inadvertently triggered by someone who was ahead of the president on the escalator,” UN spokesperson Farhan Aziz Haq told The Times. “The escalator was immediately reset and is in operation.”
‘If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen’
In the video, Melania can be seen jolting forward when the escalator stopped moving. The escalator adjacent to the Trumps was still operational, but the couple chose to walk up the motionless steps of the one that had stopped.
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Trump spoke about the glitch in his speech, saying he has “ended seven wars” and “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’ve fallen,” he said of Melania, who was wearing high heels during the incident.
A former Secret Service official expressed concern over how agents failed to react to the glitch. “This is not hard. Don’t just stand there,” former agent Rich Staropoli told RealClearPolitics.
Staropoli added that Trump’s security detail “should have closed ranks right around there, as close as you can be.” “Somebody’s got to make a call. We’re going to stand here like a bunch of morons, like we did in Butler. Or are we going to scoop up the first lady and POTUS and either go down or go up?” he said, referring to the 2024 rally in Pennsylvania where Trump survived an assassination attempt.
