During his visit to the United Nations for the General Assembly, President Donald Trump experienced a series of frustrating technical malfunctions, leading to a claim of a deliberate act by the White House.

The first incident occurred as Trump and his wife, former First Lady Melania Trump, were about to ride an escalator. As they stepped on, the escalator suddenly stopped. The couple, taken by surprise, looked back before opting to walk up the stationary escalator like a set of stairs.

The mishaps continued on the podium. When it was Trump's turn to deliver his speech, the teleprompter malfunctioned. Trump expressed his frustration from the stage, saying, "All I've gotten from the UN is an escalator that stopped on the way up and a broken teleprompter. If the First Lady wasn't in good health, she would have fallen."

While these could be seen as simple equipment failures, the White House suggested a conspiracy. White House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt took to X (formerly Twitter), claiming that if a UN employee had deliberately stopped the escalator while the president and the first lady were on it, they should be "immediately fired and investigated." In response to the controversy, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric suggested that a White House videographer, who was reportedly going down the escalator backward to film the president, may have accidentally triggered the built-in safety device.