White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is calling on United Nations officials to launch an investigation after an escalator at UN headquarters suddenly stopped while President Donald Trump and Melania Trump were stepping onto it on Tuesday morning, September 23.
The incident occurred in the entrance hall of the UN building in New York, where cameras captured the escalator stalling just as the President and First Lady began their ascent.
“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,” Leavitt posted on X, referencing a Times of London report that claimed staffers had joked about halting the escalator to force Trump to walk to the hall for his speech.
UN spokesperson Farhan Aziz Haq told The Times that “the safety mechanism was inadvertently triggered by someone who was ahead of the president on the escalator. The escalator was immediately reset and is in operation.”
In video footage of the moment, Melania Trump can be seen jolting forward when the escalator stopped. Although a neighboring escalator continued running, the couple chose to walk up the halted one instead.
President Trump later mentioned the glitch in his remarks, saying, “I have ended seven wars, and all I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle.” He added, “If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen,” noting that Melania had been wearing high heels at the time.
Former Secret Service official Rich Staropoli criticized how agents responded to the situation. “This is not hard. Don’t just stand there,” he told RealClearPolitics.
Staropoli argued the security team should have reacted more decisively. “They should have closed ranks right around there, as close as you can be. Somebody’s got to make a call. We’re going to stand here like a bunch of morons, like we did in Butler. Or are we going to scoop up the First Lady and POTUS and either go down or go up?” he said, referring to the 2024 rally in Pennsylvania where Trump survived an assassination attempt.
