{"id":82569,"date":"2025-09-24T06:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T06:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/82569\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T06:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T06:35:08","slug":"trump-delivers-maga-rebuke-to-world-with-familiar-litany-of-boasts-and-chastisements-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/82569\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump delivers Maga rebuke to world with familiar litany of boasts and chastisements \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long before it had ended, US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s address to the United Nations in its 80th year had entered the ranks of most famous or infamous. It was a Make America Great Again (Maga) rebuke to the world.<\/p>\n

The faces of some of the most prominent figures in European and global politics were set in stone as they listened to Trump\u2019s cascading message of folly and ruination. If he had restored the golden age to the United States, he could promise only a darker fortune-telling to its allies across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration and suicidal energy ideas will be the death of western Europe immediately,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes the world so beautiful is that each country is unique. Your countries are going to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

He castigated European countries for continuing to buy oil from Russia<\/a> even as they offered unflagging support for Ukraine<\/a>. \u201cThink of it. They\u2019re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?\u201d <\/p>\n

\"USUS president Donald Trump: Green energy is \u201ca scam\u201d. Photograph: Getty Images <\/p>\n

He flatly rejected the recent recognition of the state of Palestine<\/a> as a \u201creward for Hamas\u201d. He warned them that green energy is \u201ca scam\u201d. <\/p>\n

He told the gathered force of global powers that in mere months he had ended seven wars, and he lightly mocked the United Nations for two farcically unfortunate mishaps which he played for dark comedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo president or prime minister or, for that matter, no other country has done anything close to that,\u201d he said of his peace-brokering efforts, again dropping a clanger of a hint about his Nobel Peace Prize credentials.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too bad I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing that and sadly in all cases the UN did not even try to help in any of them. I never even received a phone call from the UN offering to help in finalising the deal. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that stopped right in the middle. These are the two things I got from the United Nations \u2013 a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spoke for an hour, at times acerbic, at times meandering. Contrarily and characteristically, he ended the bruising rhetoric with flattery, promising that he is fully behind the UN and warmly praising Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy as \u201ca brave man \u2013 and he\u2019s putting up one hell of a fight\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Laughter and darkness as Trump escalates grievances at the United NationsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There was no foreign policy in Trump\u2019s speech: no vision for how to end the years of death on the Russia-Ukraine front, or the starvation and death and genocide in Gaza. It was a familiar litany of boasts and chastisements.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, as bright sun flitted across the East River, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> gamely countered that there was \u201cnothing surprising in the speech and nothing new. We have heard that commentary before. Europe, in my view, is a bastion of good-quality living. Good opportunities for people. Liberty, freedom of speech and a high standard of living.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Trump has delivered these sentiments before is true. But it was the setting: his native city, in the United Nations building, in the institution\u2019s 80th year, in front of a silent classroom of world leaders who believe that appeasement, rather than confrontation, is the only way to deal with the US president\u2019s caprices. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe platform doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d suggested the Taoiseach. But Mr Martin is a natural diplomat. The platform mattered to Trump, and it was clear that he enjoyed his hour on the stage, even if nobody else did. <\/p>\n

In fact, he reminisced about the time, some 20 years ago, when he offered to redevelop the ailing UN skyscraper on First Avenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be beautiful,\u201d he said, in art-of-the-deal mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said: I\u2019m going to give you marble floors, they\u2019re going to give you terrazzo. I\u2019ll give you mahogany walls. They\u2019ll give you plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moral of the story was that the United Nations opted for the plastic-and-terrazzo chumps, at a cost Trump estimated to be two to four billion dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are walking on terrazzo,\u201d Trump told other world leaders. \u201cDid you notice that?\u201d<\/p>\n

More accurately, they are walking on eggshells. But they did not complain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long before it had ended, US president Donald Trump\u2019s address to the United Nations in its 80th year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,2863,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-82569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-united-nations-un","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}