An escalator incident involving United States President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as they headed into the United Nations General Assembly Hall on the opening day of the 80th high-level session, Sept. 23, has incited claims on social media of sabotage. However, a PassBlue review of the incident suggests it was most likely an accident caused by a videographer on the president’s media team.
The escalator leading to the General Assembly Hall, located on the second floor, suddenly stopped just as Melania Trump stepped on it, prompting her and the president, behind her, to grab the handrail to possibly avoid falling.
PassBlue reviewed a video from the incident, live-streamed on UN WebTV, showing at first a man in a blue suit walking backward, holding his videocamera to capture the Trumps’ entry into the UN and up the escalator.
According to an escalator mechanic, the videographer, heading backward up the escalator, most likely tripped hard on its comb plate at the top landing. The stationary plate is meant to prevent items from getting trapped in the gap where the steps retract, such as shoes and clothing. A slight force on the plate can activate the safety switch to immediately stop the escalator.
The incident irritated Trump. When he reached the second floor, having walked up the escalator, he pointed to it and asked, “Did you see what just happened?” It wasn’t clear who he was talking to, but he faced a media crew standing behind a barricade there.
He continued to complain about it when he was soon welcomed formally by UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed nearby, saying, “The escalator just broke down,” to which Mohammed quickly responded: “Oh, my goodness! We’re going to fix it.”
Her response did not placate Trump, who soon spent parts of his speech in the Assembly criticizing the UN for the malfunction. “All I got from the United Nations was an escalator on the way up that stopped right in the middle,” he said. “If the First Lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen.”
The UN live feed at the top of the escalator and several CCTVs in the UN would have captured the exact moment the escalator stopped, but the UN will not release the footage, PassBlue was told.
Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for Secretary-General António Guterres, said in a note to reporters on Sept. 23 that a videographer from Trump’s team who was moving backward up the escalator “may have inadvertently triggered” its safety mechanism.
The video shows the man in a blue suit coming into the UN first-floor lobby with the Trumps before heading a short distance to the escalator. International press crew and UN resident media correspondents were kept behind barricades to keep them away from obstructing entry.
The Trump administration has called for an investigation of the incident, and Trump himself has called it “absolutely sabotage.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, posted a screenshot from a Times of London article claiming a UN staffer had joked that escalators and elevators in the UN could be stopped and force Trump to walk up to show that the UN has run out of money.
Disclaimer: The story “How Trump’s UN Escalator-Gate Happened” first appeared on PassBlue and is syndicated via Digpu & NewsTex.