UN denies sabotage after escalator malfunctions when Trump steps on

After the White House suggested sabotage, the UN was forced to release a statement offering an innocent explanation for an escalator malfunction involving US President Donald Trump.

The US president and Melania Trump had to walk up an escalator shortly before Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday when the stairway abruptly ceased.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted to the incident, saying that any UN employee who was found to have purposefully stopped the escalator should be fired and subject to immediate investigation.

A screenshot of an article by The Times, where the British newspaper’s Washington editor, Katy Balls, claimed UN staff had made a joke about shutting off elevators and escalators so Trump “has to walk up the stairs,” Leavitt included in her post.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric responded to the outcry, citing the unintended consequence of a videographer from Trump’s delegation climbing the escalator ahead of the president and the first lady.

A built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was activated at the top of the escalator, according to a subsequent investigation, which included a readout of the machine’s central processing unit.

“The safety mechanism is intended to keep objects from getting caught in the gearing or getting pulled into it.” The videographer may have unintentionally activated the above-described safety feature.

Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung did not respond to a message asking for a response to the UN statement.

Trump himself made an appearance to take the incident personally, joked at the UN that the only thing he received from the international body was a “bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

Trump said, “She’s in great shape, but she’s in great shape,” which caused audience laughter.

“We’re both in good shape,” the statement goes.

Trump later addressed the incident once more in a post on Truth Social.

Trump wrote that the teleprompter was broken and the escalator abruptly slammed as we were ridding up the podium, but both of those things likely contributed to the speaker’s more engaging speech.