Trump's address to world leaders at the UN was for a different audience: his base

Source: The Guardian

Trump’s address to world leaders at the UN was for a different audience: his base

Trump told the assembled European leaders that they were destroying their own countries in a move that was ‘basically Maga madlibs’

Andrew Roth
in New York
Tue 23 Sep 2025 21.04 BST
First published on Tue 23 Sep 2025 20.03 BST

Donald Trump may have been speaking to the 192 other world leaders gathered in the United Nations, but the real target of his speech on Tuesday was Europe, which was hauled up repeatedly as the whipping boy for an antiliberal, blood-and-soil polemic that renewed an assault on the transatlantic relationship that has become a theme of his second administration.

In an hourlong address to the assembled world leaders and delegations, Trump told European leaders directly that they were destroying their own countries – and that they should be more like the US as he condemned their policies on immigration, green energy and political correctness.

These were not subtle digs. On migration, he told Europeans that “your countries are going to hell.” On Europe’s approach to climate change, he said it was “on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda”. On the war in Ukraine, he said Europe was “funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?”

He even found time to target local politicians such as Sadiq Khan, whom he called a “terrible, terrible mayor” and said that London “wants to go to Sharia law”. There was a barrage of claims about immigrants and questionable statistics about the prison populations in Germany and “beautiful Switzerland”. At moments, he would not have been out of place running for European parliament.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/trump-un-speech-maga-base

Alternate link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-spoke-world-leaders-un-190328843.html