AP file photo
The United Nations issued a statement on Tuesday after President Donald Trump took to social media to complain about technical glitches during his visit to UN headquarters in New York, where an escalator carrying him and First Lady Melania abruptly stopped after moving only a short distance.”The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above,” the statement read. The UN explained that a technician quickly reset the escalator once Trump’s delegation reached the second floor. An inspection showed the stoppage was caused by a built-in safety feature on the comb step, designed to prevent people or objects from being caught in the mechanism.When the escalator abruptly stopped, US First Lady Melania Trump, wearing high heels, was jolted forward. The couple then opted to continue walking up the stalled escalator rather than use the adjacent functioning one.However, the escalator wasn’t the only technical glitch Trump encountered during his visit to the UN. Shortly after taking the podium before representatives of all 193 member states, Trump pointed out that his teleprompter was not working as well. “I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter, because the teleprompter is not working,” Trump said, adding, “there are two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.” The responsibility for operating Trump’s teleprompter reportedly lay with the White House, a UN official told NBC News. Even if Trump appeared to laugh off the malfunctions of both the escalator and teleprompter, US officials stressed the situation was no laughing matter.The White House announced that an investigation was underway to determine whether the stalled escalator was deliberately stopped in an attempt to embarrass the president, who later criticized the UN in his address to the General Assembly in New York.”If we find that these were UN and staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up, literally, trip up the President and the First Lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people, and I will personally see to it,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt was quoted as saying by Fox News on Tuesday.
