Secretary of State Marco Rubio previewed President Donald Trump's upcoming speech to the United Nations on Fox News Tuesday morning, in part by complaining that the world organization didn't take up Trump's offer decades ago to have his personal business renovate their headquarters in Manhattan.
"You can anticipate the president will point to his own history with the U.N. going back to his time here as a developer, where he actually offered to fix the U.N. building, and instead they decided to go in another direction, wasted a bunch of money, and really didn't achieve on the building's perspective, what needed to happen," Rubio told the Fox & Friends panel.
"And I think it's emblematic of how feckless the U.N. has become as an organization," Rubio added. "It's just a place where a bunch of people meet once a year and give speeches and write out a bunch of letters and statements, but not a lot of good, important action is happening. So, again, the U.N. has a lot of potential, but it's not living up to it right now."
Trump did indeed offer to renovate the U.N. building in the early 2000s, disparaging the "cheap" marble used in the facade, and was reportedly enraged when the organization rejected this proposal. He also resented how U.N. diplomats criticized the Trump World Tower development for potentially casting orange shadows over their building.
The president using his office for personal enrichment has been an ongoing theme of both his administrations, with one of the most famous examples being his ownership of a hotel in Washington, D.C. that became a destination for foreign dignitaries who would spend money at the property to curry favor with the administration — even though he ultimately lost money on that deal.
More recently, the administration's announcement this week of a questionable new autism hypothesis raised eyebrows given Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed a folate supplement as treatment for certain autism cases, the largest supplier of which happens to be a company owned by Medicare and Medicaid administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.