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The United Nations issued a statement after an incident in which an escalator stopped as President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as they were stepping onto it Tuesday (September 23) morning after the president acknowledged the incident, while also claiming "the teleprompter was broken" during his speech addressing the UN general assembly, in a post shared on his Truth Social account.
"The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above," the U.N. statement said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
“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 statement continued. “The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”
Trump acknowledged the incidents in a lengthy Truth Social post shared on Tuesday.
"It was a great honor to speak before the United Nations. I believe the speech was very well received," he wrote. "It focused very much on energy and migration/immigration. I have been talking about this for a long period of time and this Forum, was the absolute best from the standpoint of making these two important statements. I hope everybody gets to watch it! The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden hault as we were ridding 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 United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty. Make America Great Again!"
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded United Nations officials investigate whether an escalator was "deliberately," sharing a screengrab on her X account of a Times of London article claiming that UN staff members had "joked that they may turn off the escalators and elevators and simply tell him they ran out of money, so he has to walk up the stairs."
"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," she wrote.