America First means that the American people will decide for themselves the direction that America will take, without any interference from meddling globalists.
President Donald Trump delivered a stern but much-needed address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 23rd, the first day of this year’s annual General Assembly High-Level Week. President Trump confronted the dignitaries, including many heads of state and heads of government, with stark truths rather than the platitudes and strident rhetoric that normally permeates the General Assembly Hall. The president’s performance was a tour de force.
After joking about being greeted by the UN’s broken escalator and teleprompter, the president conveyed several key messages in his speech, treating the General Assembly attendees like recalcitrant school children. “A dramatically better future is within our reach — but to get there, we must reject the failed approaches of the past,” he said, “and work together to confront some of the greatest threats in history.”
President Trump pointed to what he has managed to accomplish in turning America around after four years of the Biden administration’s disastrous foreign and economic policies. “America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth,” President Trump said. “This is indeed the Golden Age of America.”
President Trump noted how he had ended seven wars in just seven months with no help from the UN. “It’s too bad,” he said, “that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them — and sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help.”
President Trump asked the fundamental question about the UN today. What is its purpose? “The UN has such tremendous potential,” he said. “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter, and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words — and empty words don’t solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”
Even worse, the UN has created problems of its own. “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should,” President Trump said, “too often, it is actually creating new problems for us to solve.” He noted, for example, that the United Nations is “funding an assault on Western countries and their borders,” including spending in 2024 “$372 million in cash to support 624,000 migrants to journey into the United States to infiltrate our southern border.”
President Trump denounced in his speech what he called the “double-tailed monster” of uncontrolled open borders and the “green energy scam.”
“In the United States,” he said, “we reject the idea that mass numbers of people from foreign lands can be permitted to travel halfway around the world, trample our borders, violate our sovereignty, cause unmitigated crime and deplete our social safety net.” He called upon other nations, particularly in Europe, to follow his administration’s example or risk losing their countries.
President Trump reminded the global assemblage that so-called climate “experts” and environmental activists have been making apocalyptic predictions for years that unchecked climate change would wreak catastrophic devastation unless humanity quickly reverses course. According to the fearmongers, we must abandon fossil fuels and convert to total reliance on green energy before it is too late.
“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others,” President Trump said, “often for bad reasons, were wrong.” All that “brutal green energy policies” do, he added, have been to “redistribute manufacturing and industrial activity from developed countries that follow the insane rules that are put down to polluting countries that break the rules and are making a fortune.”
“Those who want peace should be united with one message, release the hostages now”
President Trump briefly discussed the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He said that he was prepared to pressure Russia to end the war in Ukraine by imposing tough sanctions. But he demanded that European countries who view Russia as their enemy stop buying oil from Russia, which has helped fund Putin’s war machine. “Think of it, they're funding the war against themselves,” President Trump said. “Who the hell ever heard of that one?”
As for Gaza, President Trump placed the blame for the continuation of the war squarely on Hamas, which, he said, “has repeatedly rejected reasonable offers to make peace.” The president sharply criticized the countries that have unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state, including key U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. “The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists for their atrocities,” he said, adding that “those who want peace should be united with one message, release the hostages now.”
President Trump is not an isolationist, despite what some of his political opponents and legacy media outlets have charged. He believes in a global trading system but one that is fair to the United States. He believes in a strengthened NATO but one in which other members besides the United States pay a reasonable share of its cost. He believes in a strong U.S. military but will use it only when he deems it necessary, such as the precision operation that destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
President Trump also believes in global cooperation, even facilitated by the UN when possible, but only if it makes sense. He provided a concrete example where he felt that international cooperation is important--the eradication of biological weapons. He announced “that my administration will lead a[n] international effort to enforce biological weapons convention, which is going to be meeting with the top leaders of the world by pioneering an AI verification system that everyone can trust. Hopefully, the UN can play a constructive role…”
What President Trump made crystal clear in his speech is that he rejects the idea of global governance and the elimination of national borders. Human beings living in different countries have their own histories, heritage, traditions, and culture that “makes each nation majestic and unique, unlike anything else in human history or any other place on the face of the earth.”
Each nation is sovereign, which means that the leaders of every nation should, in President Trump’s words, “uphold our sacred duty to our people and to our citizens.” America First means that the American people will decide for themselves the direction that America will take, without any interference from meddling globalists.
Read next: President Trump Delivers a Very Powerful Speech to the UN General Assembly
Email Us | Reader Friendly | Comments
Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.
