White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt demanded on Wednesday that the United Nations launch an investigation after reports emerged that staff at its New York headquarters intentionally stopped an escalator moments after U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania boarded it en route to his General Assembly address.
Shortly after, she announced the Secret Service had begun reviewing the matter, posting on X, “If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately.”
U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on UN escalator
The incident, dubbed “Escalatorgate” in the U.S. media—a nod to the Watergate scandal that forced President Nixon’s 1974 resignation—followed a The Times report claiming staff joked about shutting down the escalator, forcing Trump to climb stairs.
UN spokesperson Stefan Dujarric countered that the stoppage was an accidental trigger by a photographer who preceded the president, explaining, “President Trump, accompanied by the First Lady and his delegation, arrived at UN headquarters this morning and entered through the delegates’ entrance.
“After passing security, they approached the escalator. A U.S. delegation videographer, moving backward up the escalator to film, reached the top just as the First Lady, followed by Trump, stepped on at the bottom. The escalator stopped at that moment.”
He added, “Our technician reactivated it immediately after the delegation reached the second floor. A later check, including a read of the escalator’s central processing unit, showed the stop was due to a built-in safety mechanism at the top being triggered. It’s designed to prevent people or objects from being caught or sucked into the system. The photographer likely activated it unintentionally.”
In his speech, Trump lightened the mood by noting the teleprompter failure, drawing laughs with, “Whoever’s running it is in big trouble.” He later quipped about the escalator glitch, saying, “All I got from the UN is an escalator that stopped halfway up.
“If the First Lady weren’t in great shape, she’d have fallen. That’s two things I got from the UN: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.” A UN source told Ynet the White House managed the teleprompter fix during Trump’s speech, distancing UN staff from the issue.
During his address, Trump criticized the UN, saying, “It has enormous potential but isn’t even close to realizing it,” accusing it of offering “empty words that don’t end wars.”
Having withdrawn Washington from several UN bodies and cut U.S. funding, he boasted of resolving seven armed conflicts in his first seven months, citing Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia and Armenia and Azerbaijan. “It’s sad I had to do these things instead of the UN,” he said, claiming the organization failed where he succeeded.