First lady Melania Trump hosted world leaders’ spouses on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, announcing the launch of a new coalition on children’s well-being and artificial intelligence safety that she said she hoped they would join.
For one of her counterparts, Trump’s four-minute appearance at the reception marked a critical opportunity for face time with another urgent goal: ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, wife of President Volodymyr Zelensky, stood near the front of the crowded room alongside dozens of first ladies, a handful of first gentlemen and at least one queen, enthusiastically applauding Trump’s call for “simple solutions to protect our children’s ingenuity.”
Trump, in an off-white Dolce & Gabbana cashmere pantsuit with a tan blouse, called on leaders to help impose safeguards upon the spread of new technology.
“Our nations benefit from advancements in technology — saving lives, expanding access to knowledge, connecting people, and of course, safety. Nothing comes before safety,” Trump said as Zelenska watched, slowly rocking back and forth in a gilded Manhattan ballroom adorned with fresh flowers and tiered displays of macarons and finger sandwiches.
Zelenska was expected to meet with Trump following Tuesday’s event, an effort to use the US first lady’s enormous public platform to shine a light on Russian atrocities impacting her most vulnerable citizens: children.
Trump immediately departed the room after her brief remarks without greeting her counterparts as the reception continued, and Zelenska was spotted standing quietly near an elevator several minutes later while a string rendition of pop star Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” played over speakers.
An adviser to Trump downplayed any significance or change to US policy, describing the meeting as an informal hello to be polite.
“The truth is that Mrs. Zelenska has reached out to Melania several times to set up a meeting, but there’s no bilateral meeting,” Marc Beckman, a senior adviser to the US first lady, said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
Beckman added, “There’s nothing formal. As our first lady is very polite, she’s going to say hello today, but there’s no sit-down, substantive conversation set, no meeting set.”
But Ukraine’s first lady traveled to New York with a pressing mission to raise awareness among the international community about the thousands of children allegedly abducted by Russia since the war began in 2022. She was expected to make a personal appeal to America’s first lady, who has made the well-being of children a key part of her platform.
At an earlier event in New York on Tuesday, Zelenska warned that at the current rate, it would take 50 years to return all of the Ukrainian children who have been taken to Russia.
“These children cannot await a lifetime,” she said.
Zelenska said 1,625 children have been returned to Ukraine so far — a fraction of the overall number.
“Behind every name are months of searching, negotiations and risk,” she said.
Trump has signaled some openness to Zelenska’s plight.
In recent months, President Donald Trump has commented on his wife’s strong reactions to watching the war unfold on TV.
“I tell the first lady, ‘You know, I spoke to Vladimir today — we had a wonderful conversation.’ She said, ‘Oh, really? Another city was just hit,’” he recounted during a July Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, sparking criticism from Russian state media and prompting appreciative “Agent Melania Trumpenko” memes in Ukraine.
Last month, Melania Trump penned a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, obliquely referencing the “darkness” around children impacted by war, telling the Russian leader he has the power to “singlehandedly restore their melodic laughter.” She did not specifically name Ukraine, nor has she publicly stated a position on the war. The president delivered his wife’s letter to Putin during their August 15 meeting in Alaska.
When Zelensky visited President Trump in August, he delivered another letter, a personal appeal from his wife to the first lady, the contents of which have not been shared publicly.
The first ladies’ husbands also met on the sidelines of the General Assembly, where Trump escalated his rhetoric against Russia as the war drags on.
On Tuesday afternoon, with Zelenska in the audience of VIP spouses, Melania Trump unveiled her “Fostering the Future Together” initiative (which is not related to her “Fostering the Future” initiative on opportunities for foster children).
Its mission is vague, promising an effort to “(enhance) the well-being of children worldwide through the promotion of education, innovation, and technology,” according to her office, and will include private-sector collaboration on AI, robotics and blockchain. Beckman, on Fox News, described it as a “think tank” with branding that could be translated to other countries.
Trump called on her counterparts to “lead this movement in your region of the world,” to “safeguard healthy environments for our children” and to “work with me to empower children to achieve new heights across our planet.”
CNN’s Svitlana Vlasova and Ivana Kottasová contributed to this report.
Donald and Melania Trump get stuck on broken escalator at UN prompting rant to General Assembly
Donald Trump and first lady Melania were forced to walk up a broken escalator at the United Nations prompting an angry response from the president during his address to the General Assembly.
During a fiery and hectoring speech, Trump told the global body “all I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape.”
He continued “This is these are two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much. And by the way, it’s working now.”
Insiders Spill Embarrassing Truth About Trump’s UN Pratfalls
Donald Trump implied the United Nations was falling apart after his General Assembly address Tuesday kicked off with a set of technical challenges.
But the reasons for the embarrassing hitches were closer to home.
First, the escalator stopped immediately after Trump and his wife, Melania, stepped onto it ahead of his major speech.
Video showed the president, 79, looking around before he and the First Lady started to walk up the unmoving escalator.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a tweet later, demanding an investigation into whether someone had intentionally halted the escalator.
But according to someone familiar with the situation, someone in the president’s own entourage accidentally tripped the emergency stop.
They were able to quickly reset it and move on, but the president’s UN challenges didn’t stop there, a source told The Daily Beast.
As Trump took the podium to speak, he complained that the teleprompter was not working. Instead, he had to read the printed copy of his speech.
However, a person with knowledge of the situation revealed that delegations are allowed to bring their own laptops and teleprompter operators, and the UN was not running it for Trump’s speech.
The source said that the White House had its own laptop, and UN technicians were not in the booth for the president’s address.
Ultimately, the entire situation may have happened because the president’s team needed more time to set up. It was suggested that they did not arrive with enough time to make sure their equipment was plugged in and ready to go.
While the president had his own operator to run the teleprompter and laptop to run his speech, what was less clear was whether the White House had also swapped out the actual teleprompters, as some delegations do.
The entire episode could have been quickly played off had the president not made such a big deal about it, but Trump did not take kindly to the technical challenges and made it known worldwide.
After Trump walked out and thanked the audience, he started flipping through his printed speech.
“And I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter because the teleprompter is not working,” Trump said, gesturing in front of him.
“I feel very happy to be up here with you, nevertheless,” the president continued with a smile. “And that way you speak more from the heart.”
“I can only say that whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” he joked, shaking his head as the crowd laughed.
Trump began his speech by reading it from the printed version in front of him. He went on to deliver a UN speech filled with grievances, in which he also complained about the escalator not working.
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Nearly 10 minutes into his address, the president mentioned that it had stopped, while also noting that the teleprompter was finally working.
The president complained he never got a phone call from the UN offering to help finalize the wars he claimed he had stopped.
“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” Trump declared. “If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen.”
He continued that they are both in great shape before bringing up the teleprompter again.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” Trump said. “Thank you very much.”
The president brought up the escalator stopping again moments later while complaining to world leaders about not being chosen years ago for UN building renovations.
When The Daily Beast asked the White House for comment, it sent over an X post from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday afternoon.
“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,” she wrote with a screen grab from a report from The Times on Sunday that U.N. staff joked about turning off the escalators.
The response did not address the president having his own teleprompter team.
After his speech, the president brought the technical challenges up again himself on social media.
“The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden hault [sic] as we were ridding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty,” he added, but he wrote that he believed his speech was well received.
