Trump’s Low-Energy U.N. Speech Said More Than He Realized

Heather Hurlburt wrote for New York Magazine on President Trump’s UN remarks.

If the speech is remembered at all, it’s likely to be viewed as a throat-clearing before Trump plunged into battle over an impeachment inquiry. But it’s worth taking a closer look at the text, as it shows what themes we can expect to hear from Team Trump on the campaign trail — and from other would-be autocrats abroad. Here’s what we learned.

The president’s speech opened with a riff on one of his standard U.N. themes: “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.” (Let’s pause briefly to note the origins of “globalist” as an anti-Semitic slur, still used for that purpose by white nationalists in the U.S. and Europe.)

As in his last two U.N. addresses, Trump sought, without irony, to portray himself as the leader of a group of likeminded nations, each cooperating to protect its own uniqueness and sovereignty from encroaching supranational bodies … such as the U.N. This year’s General Assembly offered a demonstration of how this view is spreading among fellow world leaders (though most gave the U.S. president an icy reception). Trump was preceded by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who alternated praise for Trump with attacks on indigenous Brazilians for allegedly burning down their own rain forest and being in league with neo-imperialist attacks on Brazil’s sovereignty. He was followed by Egyptian President Abdeh Fatteh el-Sisi, who rushed to congratulate Trump after his speech, either impervious to mounting protests against his regime at home or hopeful that Trump will help him suppress them.