The only event in New York City that wastes more time and energy than the Met Gala is occurring this week, when leaders from all around the world gather for the United Nations General Assembly. While New Yorkers wait in traffic and shell out for the overtime using up NYC resources, hundreds of politicians will line up to say words that no one will pay attention to while nothing gets done, as is the UN’s MO.
President Trump, as leader of the host country, speaks second. Brazil speaks first for literally no reason aside from the fact that they did it 80 years ago, so they still do it. They have no standing in the world and no effect on international issues, but they speak first. Trump, as the leader of the free world, gets to tell everyone what he really thinks of them and the UN in general.
Trump doesn’t disappoint when it comes to the UNGA. The 2018 speech is the one that aged very well. Trump told the hall that “reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation,” congratulated Poland for building a Baltic pipeline so Europe would not depend on Moscow, and then said the line the German seats did not want to hear: “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.” The German delegation laughed, with cameras catching the smirks. Four years later, the laugh became the joke, while Nord Stream became a leash held by Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
Last year’s speech made the same point without the smirk. Trump called climate policy “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and told the room, “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” He said Europe was “being devastated by energy and immigration,” a “double-tailed monster” that “destroys everything in its wake.” The closer was the policy, not the applause line: “You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.” Europe did not heed the warning, and it is continually weaker for it.
This year, Trump arrived saying it was an honor to be there and that a lot of progress was being made. The argument he brought was simple. While others speak of peace, he said, he makes peace. This is undoubtedly true. Trump’s “peace through strength” policy may have bogged the U.S. down in Iran for longer than originally intended, but it clearly took that threat off the board. He also made deals in Serbia/Kosovo, India/Pakistan, Venezuela, and Israel. He just announced a deal to have a permanent military presence in Greenland, removing a potential forward operating base for any future enemies that may want to attack the United States. The United Nations talks about peace and does nothing. Trump doesn’t operate that way.
He went hard at Iran. There is no better example of a danger allowed to gather strength at the world’s peril, he said, than the Islamic Republic, the number one sponsor of terror. The regime spread death and carnage across the Middle East. It enabled the October 7 massacre of women, children, and the elderly. Iran was the bully. It is the bully no more. The United States will never allow a nuclear weapon. If nations stand united, he said, the world will be free of the 51-year menace of Iranian terror, and oil prices will come down. That is the speech the hall did not want.
What does the General Assembly want to hear? Well, the same week includes meetings on pandemic preparedness, the Durban racism declaration, and the elimination of nuclear weapons. Climate change will be discussed as if it is a house religion. Any thought of “misgendering” will be treated as a curse word. So, exactly the same thing as last year, and the year before, and the year before that. You wouldn’t find another group this large of useless posturers unless you were at the convention of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Of course, the General Assembly wants to hear attacks on Israel, and many leaders didn’t disappoint. Ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron used his podium time to claim that Hamas never operated in Judea and Samaria (which he called the West Bank). Of course, that’s false. It was a Hamas member from the West Bank who kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers in 2014. It was Hamas members who committed terrorist attacks on civilians a few days ago! This is not new, but neither is the willful ignorance of the French.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time.” Meanwhile, China is holding his fellow Muslims in actual camps, and Israel is delivering so much food to Gaza that there’s an obesity problem. The worst, however, was Jordan.
King Abdullah II used his turn at the General Assembly to accuse Israel of erasing Palestinian life, forcing displacement, and committing a war crime in Judea and Samaria. He conveniently ignores his own history. Under the original British Mandate after World War I, 77 percent of the territory was cut away and given to the Arabs. That land became Jordan. No Palestinian state was created there. After the 1948 war, Jordan conquered and annexed the West Bank and still did not create one. After the PLO was founded in 1964, Jordan still did not create one. After 1967, Jordan later stripped West Bank Palestinians of citizenship and cut them loose. The king now lectures Israel about Palestinians from a perch created for Palestinians.
Not to be outdone by anyone, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claimed that “The scale of killing in Gaza is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my years as Secretary-General.” For a fact check, since he became UN Secretary-General in 2017, there have been 120,000 people killed in Syria, 150,000 killed in Sudan, 162,000 killed in Ethiopia, and over 200,000 killed in Yemen. That is not including all the death and destruction in the Russia-Ukraine war or the millions killed by China during Covid. No, Guterres needs to focus on the conflict with the lowest civilian-to-combatant ratio in the history of urban warfare.
Perhaps embodying the uselessness and corruption of the UN was one of the first actions the General Assembly made, which was to renew the mandate for UNRWA for the next three years. Yes, the same UNRWA that was created to resettle Palestinian refugees (separate from UNHCR, which resettles literally every other refugee on Earth) and has yet to accomplish its goal. In 70 years, UNRWA has not resettled one Palestinian refugee.
If incompetence were its only crime, UNRWA would be bad. Except it’s far worse, because it actually pushes forward an agenda of terrorism against Israel and actually employs members of terrorist groups. UNRWA schools use Palestinian Authority textbooks. Those books glorify martyrdom, erase Israel from maps, and turn grammar drills into praise for throat-slitting and suicide belts. Independent reviews of the 2025–26 curriculum found the same material still in use. At least 12%, probably more, of those receiving UNRWA paychecks are members of Hamas or other groups.
UNRWA is the UN in miniature. A humanitarian label over a political project staffed by those who cheer a massacre and curse the West while demanding a blank check to continue these activities. The UN outlived its usefulness from the moment it was founded. It has not stopped any wars, ended any diseases, halted any humanitarian crises, defeated any dictators, or brokered any peace. Its greatest accomplishment is the sheer amount of unpaid parking tickets racked up by its diplomats and a world record of wasted words, wasted promises, and endless condemnations of the only nations that are actually improving the world.
We’ll see you next year.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.