President Donald Trump came within a hair’s width of death on Tuesday, when an escalator at the United Nations headquarters briefly stalled in an act of intentional sabotage, leaving him exposed to the mercy of a theoretical assassin’s bullet. At least that’s how Trump’s supporters and right-wing commentators are imagining it.
The 79-year-old president was indeed forced to walk up an escalator (in effect, a flight of stairs) while attending the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. The moving staircase abruptly stopped as Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stepped onto it. The president hesitated in confusion for a few moments before following his wife up the stairs.
Trump has a fixation on escalators, so much so that he descended on a golden one in Trump Tower before announcing his presidential run in 2015. For the magic moving staircase to betray him in this manner is inconceivable to him, so it’s no wonder that instead of accepting the U.N.’s explanation for the malfunction (which was that one of Trump’s own cameramen accidentally tripped the safety mechanism at the top), the president is feeding into hysterical narratives of sabotage.
Instead of acting normal about it, the president used his speech in front of the U.N. to complain about the incident. “These are the two things I got from the United Nations,” he said, “a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much.”
The White House responded with ire, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt writing later on Tuesday that “if someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately.”
The president’s allies within the right wing media took a similar tact. Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested the United States “either leave the U.N.,” or “bomb it.” Conservative commentator Will Chamberlain wrote that “watching [the video] again — this was remarkably dangerous. If someone in the building wanted Trump assassinated this would have been a great way to freeze him.”
The uproar made its way back to the Oval Office, and Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social that the malfunction had been a “sinister event,” possibly “triple sabotage” alongside a teleprompter and audio issues during his speech —- and upped the ante by demanding arrests.
“It stopped on a dime,” he whined. “It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster. This was absolutely sabotage.” The president also cited a report from The London Times claiming that U.N. workers were overheard joking about turning off an escalator to demand that the “people that did it should be arrested!”
“I’m sending a copy of this letter to the Secretary General, and I demand an immediate investigation,” Trump added. “All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button. The Secret Service is involved.”
The president’s comments were gasoline to the flaming escalator. The possibilities became endless: death, a severe fall, crippling injury, even — as Trump confidant and 9/11 conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer put it — the president being “DEVOURED,” meat grinder-style, like something out of a Live Leak video. Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo speculated on Thursday that “this could’ve been a massive, massive issue. The president being frozen there in one place makes him vulnerable.” Her guest , Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said “all those things could not be a coincidence.”
“Thankfully the first lady and the president had their hands on the rails that were going up the escalator, or they likely would’ve fallen down and injured themselves,” he said. “It seems to be intentional, let’s hope it wasn’t.”
The president was not frozen, in no immediate danger of anything other than some light cardio, which at his age and constitution might pose a problem. If we’re being serious, none of this is actually about the potential perils of an escalator coming to a sudden stop; it’s a reaction to the possibility that the president may have felt embarrassed on the international stage.
And — to be clear — the president did embarrass the nation in front of the global community. His speech before the General Assembly was an hourlong screed packed with self-aggrandizing falsehoods. But as the administration and its allies continue to build up the president as an authoritarian strongman with a near-divine mandate to power, the image of a fragile, feeble man foiled by a glitchy escalator feels far more perilous to their cause than the standard-issue ravings we’ve come to expect from Trump. And when the strongman facade cracks, the impulse is to respond with force.
It’s the same reason that men who throw a sub sandwich at the president’s stormtroopers get charged with felony assault, why The Wall Street Journal was sued for reporting on a birthday card Trump wrote to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, why instead of acknowledging the wrongful deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the administration instead made a public spectacle out of physically and emotionally torturing Abrego Garcia for months.
In the politics of Trump, embarrassment — a mistake, a gaffe, a blunder of any kind — cannot be admitted, it must instead be met with a forceful and complete reassertion of dominance and authority. The U.N. must answer for their logistical crimes — even though it appears Trump’s team was responsible for them. The president of the United States was forced to walk up a single flight of stairs and demanded that someone be arrested for it. His allies are calling for the United States to leave the organization entirely, and a host on the nation’s most prominent cable news network floated bombing Midtown Manhattan in response.
There is no dignity in it. In a gathering of hundreds of world leaders, the Americans are reduced to petulant neurosis over a happenstance glitch in the plans. In 2018, when Trump first spoke in front of the United Nations General Assembly, he was laughed at by attendees, who mocked the bravado and self-adulation that sticks to the president like sidewalk gum. This week, no one is laughing. The intervening years have seen the U.S. lose its grip on an already tenuous democratic system. America is no longer at the zenith of its global political power, and the president at the helm of it all is looking for a smooth ride into unquestioned authority. Anything else is sabotage.
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