TUESDAY: We didn't think he looked or seemed well!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

The problem which can't be discussed: Some of what happened at the U.N. today was familiar, all too familiar.

Given the norms of the venue, the president spoke at extraordinary length. Sometimes he read from teleprompter. Even after the teleprompter started to work, sometimes he plainly didn't.

Much of what he said this day was familiar, all too familiar. At Mediaite, Zachary Leeman offered a post, on the fly, which appeared beneath this headline:

Trump Insists To UN He’s Been ‘Right About Everything’ As He Spells Out Potential Doom for Foreign Countries

President Donald Trump declared on Tuesday while speaking with the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that he’s “been right about everything” while warning leaders they could be destroying their own countries.

Trump made his declaration while warning countries against the “green energy scam,” referring to investments in efforts to combat global warming like windmills.

“I’m really good at predicting things,” the president said, going on to brag about a “best-selling” hat during his campaign that boasted about him being right about everything.

Yes, he mentioned the hat! Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can read a full transcript of what he specifically said:

And I'm really good at predicting things. They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat, "Trump was right about everything." And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. And I'm telling you that if you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. 

In fairness, he wasn't being braggadocious. Also at Mediaite, Alex Griffing went with this:

Trump Lobbies for Nobel Peace Prize in UN Speech—Then Insists He Doesn’t Care About It

President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and boasted about the wars he claims he ended, repeating a favorite line of his in recent months. Trump went on to claim he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, another regular refrain from the president, but added that the lives saved are prize enough for him.

[...]

Trump then went on a tangent about the construction of the U.N headquarters in New York City, “Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I remember it so well.”

Concerning that tangent in question, the president offered this filibuster, as recorded by the invaluable Rev:

Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex.

I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, "I'm going to give you marble floors, they're going to give you terrazzo." The best of everything. "You're going to have mahogany walls, they're going to give you plastic." But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time, which actually produced a far inferior product. And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction and that their building concepts were so wrong, and the product that they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly, it was going to cost them a fortune. And I said, "And wait until you see the overruns." 

Well, I turned out to be right. They had massive cost overruns and spent between two and $4 billion on the building and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them.

You walk on terrazzo. Do you notice that? As far as I'm concerned, frankly, looking at the building and getting stuck on the escalator, they still haven't finished the job. They still haven't finished. That was years ago. The project was so corrupt that Congress actually asked me to testify before them on the tremendous waste of money because it turned out that they had no idea what it was, but they knew it was anywhere between two and $4 billion as opposed to 500 million with a guarantee, but they had no idea. And I said, "It costs much more than $5 billion." Unfortunately, many things in the United Nations are happening just like that, but on an even much bigger scale, much, much bigger.

Ah yes—he remembers it well! Various leaders of the world's many nations were forced to sit around listening to such observations as that.

Inevitably, CNN called on Daniel Dale. His presentation was mercifully short, but Mediaite's Ahmad Austin quoted a few of Dale's fact-checks:

‘A Reversal of Reality’: CNN’s Daniel Dale Calls Out Barrage of False Claims from Trump’s Marathon UN Speech

CNN’s Daniel Dale on Tuesday fact-checked a litany of false claims made by President Donald Trump during his marathon UN speech.

[...]

"He claimed that China builds a lot of wind turbines and manufactures them for others, but refuses to use it itself, barely uses wind power. In fact, China is the world leader in the use of wind power. It is building additional wind power in China far faster than the pace at which the U.S. is building in the United States itself. So the idea that China is just, you know, foisting this terrible source of energy on other countries while refusing to use it is a reversal of reality."

Dale called it "a reversal of reality." The president has been right about everything, except for some of the windmill stuff.

Dale called it "a reversal of reality." Yesterday, the president engaged in some remarkably unsophisticated prattle about autism, vaccines and the like. Today, the New York Times has published a colloquy between three medical specialists, one of whom says this about yesterday's event as a whole:

‘This May Be the Most Difficult Day in My Career’: Experts React to Trump’s Autism Remarks

[...]

Helen Tager-Flusberg: I was expecting some of what was presented, but I have to say I was shocked and appalled to hear the extreme statements without evidence in support of what any of the presenters said. In some respects this was the most unhinged discussion of autism that I have ever listened to. It was clear that none of the presenters knew much about autism...and nothing about the existing science. This may be the most difficult day in my career.

We've long asked if something might be wrong with the sitting president. Stating the obvious, it would be a human tragedy—a tragic loss of human potential—if the answer is yes.

The American press corps has agreed that such questions must never be asked or discussed. That said, we thought, as we watched the president today, that he neither looked nor seemed to be well.

That would be a human tragedy. But that's how it looked to us.

We haven't mentioned the insults directed today against former President Biden. At one point, wasting the time of the planet's leaders, the sitting president said this:

That's why the United States is now applying tariffs to other countries. And much as these tariffs were, for many years, applied to us, uncontrollably applied to us, we've used tariffs as a defense mechanism under the Trump administration, including my first term, where hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs were taken in. And by the way, we had the lowest inflation and now we have very low inflation. The only thing different is that we have hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into our country. But this is how we will ensure that the system works for everyone and is sustainable into the future. We're also using tariffs to defend our sovereignty and security throughout the world, including against nations that have taken advantage of former U.S. administrations for decades, including the most corrupt, incompetent administration in history—the Sleepy Joe Biden administration.

For the record, no money is "flowing into the country" when those tariff payments are made. Meanwhile, the fellow can't quit the childish, insulting nicknames, even on this global stage.

We didn't think he looked or seemed well. That would be a human tragedy, but this is the situation our nation has chosen, and as Chekhov said at the end of Lady With Lapdog, things don't get any simpler from here.