A White House staff member was responsible for the stoppage of a moving staircase at the United Nations as President Donald Trump and the First Lady were riding it, according to the findings of a U.N. investigation. The White House was also responsible for the teleprompter malfunction, the U.N. said.
The U.N. Secretariat released its conclusions Tuesday regarding the sudden halt of the moving staircase used by the U.S. president and his wife during the opening of the 80th session of the General Assembly.
According to U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, the incident was caused by the accidental triggering of a safety mechanism, not a deliberate act by the American delegation.
The Associated Press was the first to report the results of the inquiry, later confirmed by NBC News.
In a note to reporters, Dujarric explained: “The moving staircase stopped after the built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the staircase. The mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects from being caught and pulled into the gearing. A White House photographer may have inadvertently triggered this safety function.”
As for the teleprompter, it was under the responsibility of the White House team, the U.N. noted.
Despite the U.N.’s confirmation that the incident was accidental, the episode sparked strong political reactions.
Trump himself chose to reference the malfunction when he addressed the 193 delegations: “There are two things I got from the United Nations: a bad moving staircase and a bad teleprompter,” he quipped, drawing amused reactions from the room.
A U.N. official also told NBC News that the teleprompter used by the president was managed by the U.S. delegation, not by the Secretariat.
On Truth Social, Trump doubled down with irony: “The teleprompter was broken and the moving staircase suddenly stopped as we were riding up to the podium. But both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if their equipment is somewhat faulty.”
His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, struck a far more serious tone. Writing on X (formerly Twitter), she said: “If someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the moving staircase as the President and First Lady were stepping on, that person must be fired immediately and investigated.”
Later on Fox News, she amplified her suspicions: “When you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence to me. (…) If we find that these were U.N. staffers who were purposely trying to trip up — literally trip up — the president and the first lady of the United States, then there better be accountability for those people, and I will personally see to it.”
The sequence, widely shared on social media, has fueled debate about the security of world leaders during high-level gatherings.
According to AP and NBC News, the investigation was brief but conclusive: the sudden stoppage was indeed caused by an inadvertent move by a White House videographer accompanying the president’s delegation.
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