All posts tagged "united nations"

Trump's perilous racket will do more than just stuff his pockets

Trump Tower. Trump Steaks. Trump University. Trump Watches. Trump cologne, candles, coins, robes, ornaments, towels, pens, gerbils, and gold-tipped suppositories. It’s hard to think of anything Trump hasn’t tried to monetize.

And now, from his premier fantasy collection, there’s Trump UN.

Last September, while Trump was busy solving eight wars that leaders of those countries say never started, never ended, or had nothing to do with him, Trump hatched a plan to line his own pockets with the misery in Gaza. He came up with a Gaza Board of Peace vested with magical powers to maintain order while steering private investments to his friends and family.

Billion-dollar racket

For a mere billion-dollar membership fee, you can join Trump’s Orwellian-themed Board of Peace and dine with the world’s most brutal dictators.

Trump, who invested his dad’s money in Middle East real estate decades ago, claimed last year that the U.S. would “run” Gaza, that he saw “long-term ownership” possibilities there. His “Riviera of the Middle East” proposal with son-in-law Jared Kushner floated luxury tourism and an economic hub, describing a “phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather” with “unbelievable” potential.

The only hitch? Someone would first need to relocate more than two million desperately poor Palestinians who have nowhere else to go.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no fan of international law or Palestinians, loved the concept. Arab leaders, not so much. Palestinians, leaders of surrounding Arab nations, and international organizations saw Trumps ‘Riviera’ as ethnic cleansing, ripe for war crimes under international law.

Trump’s peace deal didn’t survive

After widely congratulating himself for the Gaza ceasefire, Trump first mentioned a Gaza Board of Peace to govern reconstruction of the rubble pile last October. The ceasefire never really materialized — they’re still killing each other — but Trump’s Board idea took hold of his ego and ran with it.

As Trump originally designed it, the Board would provide a forum where Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other Middle East countries could discuss political reforms and reconstruction of Gaza, the latter rife with private profit potential. Trump, who has already pocketed $1.4 billion in loose emoluments since re-assuming the presidency, magnanimously offered to serve as chairman.

By the time he got around to presenting the Board last week at Davos, it had become a barnacle attached to his id, distorted beyond recognition. The Times of Israel published the Board’s charter, announcing that it would “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”

The grandiosity of purpose was not limited to Gaza; as the Times of Israel noted, the charter doesn’t even mention Gaza. Instead Trump’s Board aspires to be a private, mini United Nations divvying up the spoils of war and operating under one thumb: Trump’s.

Democratic leaders politely declined

The Board is Trump’s power fantasy strutting on a catwalk. Under Trump’s plan, he personally gets to decide policies for the world and declare resolutions by majority vote, reserving veto power for himself. He also gets to name his successor, which, preliminarily, will be Don Jr. (when he isn’t in a helicopter slaughtering animals endangered by his dad’s climate ignorance).

Trump has crowned himself and his smirking spawn Chairmen of the Universe of Rogue Actors which includes the leaders of Hungary, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan. They’re all royals or dictators or both, or they’re wannabes buying access. Their billion-dollar entrance fee is a solid investment in their oligarchs, not just in Gaza but around the globe.

When Trump presented the idea at Davos, EU leaders were already aghast at his Greenland blunder. When he invited Canada, the U.K, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and other European nations to join, the invitees had already gotten a good look at who he is, and what he is up to. Unsure whether to attribute Trump’s bombast to dementia, malice or some sick combination of hubris and ignorance, their unified response was to say no thank you, and back away.

What’s left for the Board to do?

While wrecking the global economy and trying to start a civil war at home to slake his midterm worries, Trump has awarded himself the power to “administer Gaza” even as European leaders roll their eyes and describe his derangement as “dangerous.” They are also walking the talk, pivoting away from Trump’s adulterated version of democracy.

This week India and the European Union closed a breakthrough free trade agreement reducing tariffs. German firms’ investments in China are at a four-year high. Working around Trump, Mexico, Canada and China are rapidly expanding their cooperation. Despite Trump’s stated goal of weakening China economically, his tariffs accelerated supply-chain reconfiguration, causing China’s 2025 trade surplus to surge to a record-breaking $1.2 trillion. After treating Venezuela like a real-estate acquisition, Trump can’t even convince his own big oil supporters to invest there.

Real leaders, in short, aren’t buying Trump’s “U.S. economy is hotter than ever” schtick or his Gaza “Peace” Board.

Trump thinks he can fool the world, but he can’t fool anyone outside the Fox News/Sinclair propaganda bubble. He will try to do his worst in Gaza, but the civilized world, fed up with Trump’s insanity, is moving on.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

This Trump ploy isn't just scandalously unethical: it's yet another impeachable offense

This isn’t merely scandalous or unethical: it’s impeachable on its face and dangerous to the survival of democracy worldwide.

Donald Trump is trying to use a United Nations resolution to justify making himself King of the World via a new “Board of Peace” that Trump says “might” replace the UN, with the ability to pass the title along to his son, Don Jr., if he continues to please his father.

No, this isn’t an exaggeration.

It all started when the United Nations Security Council voted to accept Resolution 2803 on Nov. 17, to make effective the Gaza peace plan agreed to by Israel and Hamas in October 2025.

Resolution 2803 called for a two-year international stabilization force and a “Board of Peace” to oversee the process in the region. It was explicit, however, that this would be a board with a very limited portfolio:

“The Security Council, Welcoming the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict … Welcomes the establishment of the Board of Peace (BoP) as a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza pursuant to the Comprehensive Plan, and in a manner consistent with relevant international legal principles, until such time as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has satisfactorily completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French Proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza.”

In response to that, Trump had his administration lawyers create an entirely new private, non-governmental “treaty‑based international organization” with its own legal personality, that is not a U.S. government agency, corporation, or standard NGO/non‑profit. This new entity called the “Board of Peace” would:

Make Trump its chairman, with essentially absolute power and a veto over every action.
Make the chairman the only person able to invite or approve new member-states into the group.
Give Trump the sole ability to appoint his own successor as heir/successor/chairman, such as Don Jr.
Keep the Board of Peace in existence for perpetuity should the current or a subsequent Chairman decide.
Make the entrance fee for permanent members $1 billion each, money the Chairman controls.

The draft charter Trump has proposed for his Board of Peace doesn’t even mention Gaza, anywhere; as a result, it appears designed to replace the UN as a new governing body for the entire world.

When asked if Trump intended the Board to replace the UN, he replied that it “might” do so, adding:

“The UN should have settled every one of the wars that I settled. I never went to them. I never even thought to go to them.”

The White House has already named the first four Executive Board members: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, billionaire and Trump friend Steve Witkoff, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Vladimir Putin also indicated he’d like to join and suggested Russia’s billion-dollar entrance fee could come from funds already seized by the US government.

This “give us an inch and we’ll take a mile” attempt to co-opt the power and role of the UN and give it entirely to the Trump family, creating a new international royal family that could rule the world for generations to come, was described by Jacob T. Levy, a political theory professor at McGill University, as “impeachable.”

“Regardless of whether this organization ever even looks in the direction of Gaza, it’s an assault on the international order subordinating the decisions of states to the personal jurisdiction of the Trump family … It’s hard to be shocked anymore, I know, but we should be shocked.”

This international power grab also comports with Trump’s statement yesterday at Davos that his becoming a dictator for the world would be a good thing:

“…I’m a dictator,” he told a reception for CEOs, adding, “But sometimes you need a dictator.”

It’s an echo of his statement last August as he was ordering troops into the streets of Washington, DC:

“A lot of people are saying, maybe we like a dictator,” then added, speaking of people’s comments about himself, “Already they’re saying he’s a dictator. The place is going to hell and we’ve got to stop it.”

With no elections, accountability, or checks-and-balances, this “Board of Peace” is a direct assault on democracy worldwide. The chairman (Trump) is not answerable to voters, Congress, courts, or international law: this is the opposite of democratic governance.

The chairman overrides all collective decisions, and even if member states vote, their decisions mean nothing without Trump’s approval. That isn’t democracy, it’s veto-by-monarchy.

This is designed to normalize authoritarian governance worldwide, fulfilling Putin’s dream. If the U.S. president can create a parallel global authority that ignores democratic norms, why shouldn’t other strongmen like him and Xi Jinping do the same? Or simply start ignoring UN mandates and rules, saying they now submit to the BoP’s authority instead?

It’s also corruption, plain and simple. The billion-dollar “fee” to stay in good standing is legalized bribery, making the entire scheme simply a form of extortion dressed up as governance: pay or be expelled.

Because membership can be terminated at the chairman’s whim — even after payment — this isn’t a real “treaty organization”: it’s a protection racket that violates the most basic anti-corruption norms the U.S. claims to defend. “Nice little country you have there; we’ll help you bring peace if you pay up to the Trump family…”

It’s also establishing a new form of dynastic rule with the Trump family at its center. Trump appointing his own successor isn’t even subtle: it’s a proposal for hereditary power without even the pretense of merit or consent.

And, because the Trump family, not the American people, controls the future of the organization, it’s not even a nod in the direction of the democracy our Founders and generations of Americans have fought and died to bring into being and keep alive. Even if voters were to decisively reject Trumpism at the ballot box, the Trump dynasty would still keep power at a level above the United States itself.

This mirrors the logic of autocracies the U.S. claims to oppose, including Russia, North Korea, and the Gulf monarchies that are all so dear to Trump. America fought a revolution to escape dynastic rule, but now Trump wants to establish one here and then export it worldwide.

Trump’s “Board of Peace” is a direct threat to American constitutional government because the US itself, under the terms of this charter, becomes subject to Trump’s personal authority. Under the proposed document, the U.S. can be expelled unless it pays a ransom or pleases the chairman.

This also undermines the American presidency as an institution — and future American presidents — because a future democratically elected president could be extorted or sidelined by this private Trump-led entity. It also bypasses Congress entirely with no treaties, no ratification, and no oversight. This isn’t “America First”: it’s Trump and his family first, raw personal power, with America Optional.

And it takes a direct whack at the international order established by the United Nations eighty-plus years ago. The BoP charter doesn’t even bother to mention Gaza, its supposedly humanitarian justification. International law is thus replaced by the Trump family’s personal jurisdiction, and nation-states are no longer equal actors; they become simple clients dependent on Trump’s favor.

The structure also rewards authoritarian regimes and punishes democracies. Dictators can pay, flatter, and comply, while democracies are constrained by law and public accountability and thus disadvantaged.

Already, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has said, “We have, of course, accepted this honorable invitation.” After the United States pulled back from 66 UN organizations and is now $1 billion in arrears on our dues, the 21 nations already committed to signing up also include: Bahrain, Morocco, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Israel, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan and Mongolia.

This dangerous precedent doesn’t bring peace to Gaza or anyplace else. Instead, it replaces law with loyalty to the Trump dynasty.

If Trump can get away this, so can the next demagogue because once democratic norms are abandoned, they don’t magically return. It sets a precedent for private, unaccountable global power.

Which is why Jacob Levy is right: this is impeachable on its face. This phony “Board of Peace” is a personal power project that treats democracy as an inconvenience, the rule of law as optional, and the world as a Trump family inheritance.

We should be as shocked and furious as are the leaders of Europe’s top democracies — who have said they will not participate — and moving quickly toward impeaching our wannabe king and his courtiers.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.

We elected an imbecile — and his latest move could kill us all

Since Donald Trump has been back in office, energy prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation. The Consumer Price Index from the end of October reported an “all items price index” increase for food, shelter, and transportation of 3.0 percent over a 12-month period, while energy services for the same period rose by 6.4 percent.

After promising to slash energy prices, Trump has done the opposite. His energy policies reflect the same ethos driving everything else in his retribution playbook: reward donors and inflict pain on Democrats, even when the economic consequences are nationwide.

Lust for retribution

In early October, Trump announced the claw-back of billions of dollars in federal funding for utilities, money that had been appropriated to reinforce power grids and reduce electricity prices.

Targeting blue states exclusively, Budget Director Russ Vought announced the cancellation of “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” In all, 321 Congressionally set awards supporting 223 wind, solar, and transmission projects were trashed.

Trump’s aversion to clean energy isn’t the only factor driving costs. His refusal to upgrade the grid, his half-baked export and tariff initiatives, and his blind support for energy-sucking AI data centers are all contributing to surging energy prices with no relief in sight.

As Canary Media framed it, “Trump slapped tariffs on certain wind turbine materials and opened a sham “national security” probe to pave the way for even more. He halted construction on a nearly completed offshore wind farm and moved to revoke permits for two more. He canceled hundreds of millions in port funding critical to offshore wind development and imposed new directives to stifle renewable projects on federal lands.”

Trump’s dedication is showing: after only ten months of Trump 2.0, US household electric bills have increased by 10 percent, and are expected to continue climbing.

UN Climate Summit

Trump is doing more than reversing US climate successes, he’s also undermining progress in other parts of the world. Last month, when the International Maritime Organization agreed on the world’s first carbon tax on global shipping to encourage the transition to cleaner fuels, Trump released a childish Truth Social rant threatening to retaliate.

This month, he ignored the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Thankfully, California Governor Gavin Newsom attended, representing the world’s fourth-largest economy. Newsom highlighted California's efforts to step up on climate where Trump has stepped out.

Facing down the embarrassment of an antiquated, know-nothing, pro-fossil fuel regime, Newsom didn’t hold back. When asked about the US retreat from global climate action, he called Trump “an invasive species … He’s a wrecking ball president trying to roll back progress of the last century … he’s doubling down on stupid.”

Newsom did more than talk. While he was at the summit, he signed new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to advance clean energy, wildfire prevention, and other climate-related initiatives. He also expanded California’s existing partnerships with China and Mexico on clean energy development and zero-emission freight corridors.

Newsom managed to bolster California's profile as a stable international business and climate partner despite the optics of a US president ruled by ego and impulse.

Our loss, China’s gain

In September, addressing the UN, Trump called climate change a “con job” and urged other world leaders to abandon their climate efforts despite the Earth’s rising temperatures. Trump claimed falsely that China sells wind turbines to the world without using them at home, and told assembled leaders, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”

The next day, China pledged the reverse. Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to increase electric vehicle sales and dramatically increase wind and solar power, targeting a 600 percent increase over 2020 levels.

Despite Trump’s claim, China has vastly expanded wind power developments at home, adding 46 gigawatts of new wind energy this year alone, enough to power than 30 million homes. Meanwhile, our Cro-Magnon regime froze permits for wind farms and issued stop work orders, ending tens of thousands of wind energy jobs in the process.

Critics agree that Trump’s withdrawal from climate efforts ceded valuable ground to China, which is now rapidly expanding its renewable and EV industries. China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy just unveiled OceanX, a two-headed offshore wind turbine. OceanX is expected to cut offshore energy costs to one-fifth of Europe’s costs while allowing wind farms to operate with fewer, more powerful turbines.

“China gets it,” Newsom said at the UN Climate Summit, “America is toast competitively, if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, on supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone.”

Newsom is right. Americans are suffering the tragedy of an uninformed and unstable president who rejects science, a president who wants to take us back to the 19th century. We have also inflicted our tragedy on the rest of the world.

Pope Leo frames climate action as a moral and spiritual imperative, tying the “cry of the Earth” to the “cry of the poor,” because small island nations and the global south, including poor states in the US, will continue to suffer the most from extreme weather and climate destruction.

Trump will be dead before climate change becomes an obvious existential threat. As Newsom said, he is only temporary. But the global destruction he leaves behind could be permanent. We owe it to our children, ourselves, and all the earth’s inhabitants to never again elect an imbecile, and to shut this one down before he kills us all.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

One Trump rant displayed the true banality of evil

World leaders meet every September for the United Nations General Assembly. There have been plenty of weird moments over the years: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table in 1960 to stop the leader of another country from criticizing him, Fidel Castro going on for more than four hours in a speech that same year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calling US President George W. Bush the “devil” in 2006.

President Donald Trump has had his odd UN moments as well. In 2017, he lashed out against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a “rocket man ... on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” The following year, Trump returned to the podium to claim that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” He was surprised to hear the audience laugh at this absurd boast.

Trump returned to the UN last month for an even more bizarre performance. For an hour, he berated the assembled leaders with his usual grievances and overstatements. As usual, he played up his rescue of the US economy (even as it teeters on a precipice because of his tariffs) and prevention of a “colossal invasion” at the border (though the numbers of migrants had been going down in the final year of the previous administration). He repeated his claim that he ended seven wars (he hasn’t). He claimed that he “has the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had” (at 39 percent, they’re actually at their lowest level).

But he also went on an extended riff on why he should have gotten the contract to renovate the UN headquarters, asserted that all countries are “going to hell” because of migration, claimed that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion on the planet today,” and insisted that he “was right about everything. And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true.”

All of this was disconcerting, but foreign leaders often come to the UN to tell lies.

It’s what Trump said in his UN address about climate change and renewable energy that went beyond mere lies.

Climate change, Trump announced, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world ... All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people... If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

The “green scam” involves clean energy, which Trump has steered the United States away from.

“We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they’re a joke. They don’t work. They’re too expensive.”

Climate change predictions, in fact, have been all too accurate. Last year was the warmest on record. The glaciers are melting faster than ever before. Superstorms are intensifying around the planet, even in the United States.

Renewable energy, meanwhile, works very well. I discovered just how well renewable energy works just this week when an accident caused an interruption in the electricity grid in our neighborhood and our solar panels kept our refrigerator humming. Solar and wind power now produce electricity at rates much cheaper than the lowest-priced fossil fuels (41 percent cheaper for solar, 53 percent for offshore wind).

The UN, of course, has identified climate change as a major — if not the major — threat to humanity. You can’t fault Trump for not being bold. But it was as if he had stood up at a conference of astrophysicists and announced that the US government now believed that the Earth is at the center of the solar system. He would not only be wrong; He would be proposing to destroy all of the industries based on the science of astrophysics — satellites, space stations, and the like.

Similarly, Trump’s ideas about climate change are not just wrong or even just unworkable. They are evil. By pushing for the return of fossil fuels in the United States and elsewhere, Trump is putting the effort to arrest climate change beyond reach. The planet is heading toward a brick wall, and Trump has not only taken his foot off the brake, he has pushed down hard on the accelerator.

Trump once criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to address climate change. Now, because of the political and financial support of the fossil fuel lobbies, he has executed a U-turn. As a result, more and more people will die as a result of heat, flooding, and famine. One recent study in Nature estimates over 240,000 deaths per year because of heat, disease, floods, and other direct effects of climate change. Trump’s claims, in other words, amount to the denial and perpetuation of a mass murder.

In her essays about Nazis and genocide, the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil.” She rightly identified the faceless bureaucrat as the modern era’s personification of crimes against humanity. These bureaucrats were not motivated primarily by ideology or the will to power. Incapable of empathy, they were doing their job as just another cog in the machinery of evil.

There are many such banal personifications of evil in modern society — the CEO of a nuclear weapons production facility, the judge who signs off on the deportation of a Russian dissident back to the country that will imprison or execute him, the flak who writes the government press release about Israeli military actions in Gaza. You will not read about these people in the newspaper. They are just doing their jobs.

Trump is not like that. He wants to be in the public eye 24/7. He wants to be heralded as the person responsible for dramatic change in the United States and the world. He thinks that he’s not only doing good in the world but that he is the best person in the world.

This is evil in the age of social media. It is evil committed by people who believe that they are the stars of their own movies and the rest of us are just extras.

Trump’s evil, of course, resides in his actions. But it is also because he denies collective action. Trump’s evil is that of extreme narcissism.

Climate change can only be stopped by everyone pulling together and acting in concert. But that flies in the face of Trump’s boast that he alone can solve the world’s problems. His bragging is not just a personality quirk or even the sign of a personality disorder. It is an essential element of his particular form of evil.

John Feffer is the author of the dystopian novel "Splinterlands" (2016) and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His novel, "Frostlands" (2018) is book two of his Splinterlands trilogy. Splinterlands book three "Songlands" was published in 2021. His podcast is available here.

Trump's blunders 'raise the risk of global conflict' as enemies 'gang up': analyst

After a series of diplomatic blunders, President Donald Trump and America's reputation loss could "raise the risk of global conflict" and come at a major cost, including "mischief or worse" from enemies.

In an opinion piece published Monday, Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth describes how a good reputation can be difficult to obtain or maintain, and Trump "has squandered whatever credibility America had left in foreign and security policy."

Following his rambling speech last week in front of the United Nations and his struggle to see the difference between "personal chemistry" with President Vladimir Putin and diplomatic action, Trump has effectively put both adversaries and allies on edge, wrote Kluth.

"Inklings of danger are everywhere," Kluth writes. "America’s partners are becoming more anxious and making alternative arrangements for their security: Saudi Arabia just signed a defensive pact with Pakistan after watching an Israeli strike against its Gulf neighbor Qatar, which is allied to, but got no help from, the United States. America’s adversaries keep testing the resolve of Trump and the West, as Putin is doing in eastern Europe. Or, like Xi Jinping in Beijing and Kim in Pyongyang, they’re recalculating bellicose scenarios in secret. Other countries, like India, are wary of committing to America and keeping all options open, even clutching hands with Moscow and Beijing."

And although Trump is not the first president to struggle with navigating U.S. reputation among foreign nations, it puts America at an unfortunate future disadvantage.

"Against this backdrop, anybody watching US policy for the past decade, from friendly Europe to adversarial China, already had reason to doubt US credibility. What Trump has done in his second term is to remove the doubts and confirm the loss. Allies now know they can’t trust America, while adversaries are ganging up and recalculating their plans for mischief or worse.

It's unclear what will happen in the future; a damaged reputation jeopardizes diplomacy.

"These responses to America’s loss of credibility will raise the risk of global conflict," Kluth writes. "The danger will go up even more if the US, under this or a future president, panics and decides to overcompensate in reestablishing its reputation, with a demonstratively hawkish turn that could tip into war. If America and the whole world are becoming less safe, it’s because Donald Trump’s foreign policy is, literally, in-credible."

Countries forced to 'grin and bare teeth' as 'washed-up' Trump official tries to get clout

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is forcing other countries to "grin and bare their teeth" as he attempts to show his loyalty to the Trump administration amid reported criticism that he's "washed-up."

Mike Waltz — still recovering his reputation from the Signalgate scandal, where he added a journalist from The Atlantic to a Signal chat with several Trump appointees discussing an impending military strike — was confirmed just three days before the high-level diplomatic week at the General Assembly, according to Politico on Friday.

"There’s a lot of personal diplomacy involved in New York, and it’s a face-to-face job more so than in a bilateral relationship — and an ambassador’s cachet is their ability to speak for the president,” a former U.S. official with knowledge of the U.S. mission in New York, told Politico. “When you have a washed-up ambassador who was so visibly shunted, other countries will grin and bare their teeth hoping that Waltz can convey messages on their behalf.”

Over the last several days, the former national security advisor has issued a stern warning to Russia following its breaches of NATO airspace and argued against a Palestinian state in his speeches at the U.N. Security Council sessions.

His main job is to represent President Donald Trump, whose speech to the U.N. earlier this week (and triple sabotage claims) left diplomacy experts cringing.

Waltz's new role was seen as a demotion by some, and it even took months to confirm him, but Trump administration officials reportedly cited that he is a "key player" in Trump's team. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt have all reportedly rallied around him.

“The president still likes Mike Waltz. He wasn’t fired. Security didn’t remove him from the building. He stayed on the executive payroll,” a former Trump administration official told Politico. “Mike Waltz is out of central casting for the administration at the U.N. with his warrior-statesman ethos.”

You thought Trump couldn't go any lower. Guess what?

President Donald Trump disgraced America again on Tuesday.

That’s business as usual, in most contexts. But this time Trump projected his psychosis beyond the customary bounds of American politics.

Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a rant filled with insults and lies that might go down in history as the vilest of its kind.

Presumably speaking for all of us Americans, Trump told the entire world to f––– off.

Among the most vile lowlights of Trump’s tantrum:

He dismissed climate change as a “con job,” mocking decades of scientific consensus in front of world leaders who have committed themselves to fighting rising seas and burning forests.
He framed immigration as a global poison, attacking nations that take in refugees while offering no solutions — just fear, contempt and seething xenophobia.
He claimed Christianity is the most persecuted religion on Earth, an inflammatory lie intended to stoke division and grievance while pandering to his White Nationalist base.
He vomited falsehoods that he had presumably “resolved” seven major conflicts — including Israel-Iran and India-Pakistan, rewriting reality while of course offering no proof since none exists and drawing eye-rolls, not applause.
He told U.N. diplomats their countries are “going to hell” for permitting too much immigration, then basked in the moment like he was inflaming a rally crowd, not representing all Americans at a global forum.

Here’s how the Wall Street Journal news report characterized the speech:

In an hour-long speech filled with grievances about ongoing wars, windmills and malfunctioning escalators, it was Trump’s attacks against what he called a “double-tailed monster” that rang loudest in the ornate General Assembly room.

“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” he said.

“Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. Both immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”

Immigration in particular was ruining other nations, Trump insisted: “Your countries are going to hell.”

(Now, if you’re wondering about the escalator references, Trump was whining like a toddler about how an escalator in the UN building had stopped for a moment, briefly stranding him and First Lady Melania Trump. All our hearts go out to Melania.)

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a U.S. president calling out the UN for perceived ineffectiveness. Many Americans share that concern — and while some of us would rather see constructive, adult engagement to improve the UN’s efforts, that would remain perfectly within the bounds of propriety.

But that’s not what Trump did yesterday. He put on world display a level of hatred and boorishness — and a cringeworthy lack of gravitas — that certainly had diplomats the world over shaking their heads. Even beyond what they have come to expect.

Two days before the UN speech, Trump delivered one just as toxic at the memorial service for slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk. There, he proclaimed, “I hate my opponent, I don’t wish him well.”

That, of course, was a message to the sizable majority of Americans — at least 60 percent and counting — who disapprove of Trump today. Without apology, he let hundreds of millions of Americans know of his hatred for them.

But Trump didn’t just stop with us today. He also let it be known that he hates the world.

“Your countries are going to hell!” Trump raged.

That’s the only way he’d ever get to know them better.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

The world watched Trump rave at the UN. What it learned is no laughing matter

It is beyond ironic that Donald Trump names so many of his clubs "Trump International," because he never seems more out of place than when forced to address global matters. His very small world comes across as laughable, but it matters.

Whatever it is that fires up the Trump mystique among the MAGA movement, capturing the support of 40 percent of Americans at any given moment, it certainly doesn't travel. He is never found more wanting than when addressing global matters. The most recent humiliation actually occurred here at home — his home, New York City, but in front of the world at the United Nations.

Standing at the same podium on which Khrushchev banged his shoe, Castro held court for four hours, and JFK aspired to "explore the stars," Trump announced to an attentive world that while he was personally "really good at predicting things," immigration was causing their countries to go to hell. Nice.

It would be almost impossible for him to sound older. While there is room to discuss ways a country keeps its original culture in an evolving world, or the mechanisms for orderly immigration, the very idea that nations can isolate in a connected globe is both mystifying and unwanted. Given that Trump was primarily directing his immigration animosity toward Europe, he's essentially telling them to stay "white" or descend into Satan's flames. Nice.

Were that his only problem.

Not only did Trump float out his ugliest of ideas, the "great replacement theory,” but he also went fact-free in addressing one of the most sophisticated audiences he'll ever entertain, and did so when addressing the topic about which that audience was most interested — trade. He claimed that in his second term so far, the United States has "secured commitments and money already paid for $17 trillion," a statement so laughable as to bring a drink to the nose, given that America's entire GDP last year was $29 trillion.

The laughable lie is akin to telling a domestic audience that drug prices will go down 1,500 percent. If Trump could be believed, Walgreens will now pay us $52.25 to pick up the Klonopin needed to survive this post-fact world. And yet there he is, this time speaking to international leaders, laying out another statistical impossibility. Nice.

Did he whine? Of course, he did. Trump complained that no one has given him any credit for ending wars around the world — he seems stuck on seven, though no one can name them, and then noted that "everyone says I should get a Nobel Peace Prize." He did not say, "After all, they gave a Nobel to the Black president," but he may as well have. This column is more likely to win the Nobel Prize for Literature than this unserious man winning a prize for peace. But he whined anyway. Nice.

Now, do not doubt for a second that despots around the world do tell Trump such stupid stuff and will laud him in private over his powerful UN oratory. No question, when he hears from leaders in the Middle East, Latin America, China, or other authoritarian strongholds, he is showered with praise, told that the United States is "strong again," and most certainly, he deserves that white whale, the damn Nobel.

It is just that easy for other dictators to pick our pockets while filling his with flattery. Nice. To him, at least.

This is all just so awful on so many levels. American foreign policy over the decades, while fallible to a fault, was better than nearly any alternative, largely a force for good. And while that is nice, it also benefited Americans in more ways than we can count. From military bases in the Far East and Europe, to wall-sized televisions for $500, attracting the smartest people on Earth, and cutting-edge tech, Americans benefited tremendously from being "the good guys," the enlightened ones, science-centered, fiscally powerful, with a sensible long-term outlook. No more.

We look as stupid as he sounds.

Many might say, "Well, it's still just a speech and can't matter in the long run," but they're wrong. It does matter. Because the audience extends beyond the delegates. Imagine CEOs in Germany, Korea, or India, power players considering a major infrastructure move in the United States. Big business craves stability. Foreseeability. Reliability. They hear this crazed American and his policy and see only liability.

Banks, too. Entire economies ride the back of the 30-year mortgage, the bet that the next three decades will look "similar enough" to the last three that banks will extend loans, providing the American dream — home ownership. But again, as Wall Street looks on in wonder, muttering "WTAF," moguls here and around the world consider gripping their money tighter, putting our economy in peril, making everything more expensive.

Kind of funny. If the U.S. actually took in $17 trillion "every few months," the federal government could probably buy everyone a house. And that would be nice.

But that won't happen because it's not a serious number, nor based on a serious trade policy. It matters because trade is what underlies the UN's greatest purpose, peace throughout the globe. It is hard to go to war with the country that makes your phone. Simply put, we cannot afford to wage war with China. Global trade is essential to peace and prosperity, but do you suppose that any world leader sitting in that audience believes that he or she can enter into a beneficial, solid trade agreement with the United States?

No, and now your car just got more expensive and the world more unstable. Not nice.

But it certainly is expected when the president of the United States, once considered the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on Earth, takes to the podium whining, lying, and sounding like a petulant man-child, or exactly what happened this week. Skip the horror movie this Halloween and instead watch a side-by-side comparison of a typical Barack Obama UN speech next to that. Then think about the next 30 years.

For the last 30 years, the world has been pretty good to the United States, and the United States has been good to much of the world. Our military owned the seas and the skies, our crops had intercontinental buyers, our stuff was fairly cheap, oil flowed too freely, and economic progress was essentially baked in. Nice.

No longer.

Standing at the same podium from which Ronald Reagan brought along the Soviets, Nelson Mandela fought apartheid, and Pope Francis argued for drastic action on climate change, current American president Donald Trump talked about hats that said he's right about everything, then repeated, "And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything."

Just what the world ordered. The know-nothing playing the know-it-all all. Nice.

Because it is not just a speech. It is a direction, one that encompasses 340 million citizens, a powerful military, backed by a powerful GDP, and against that juggernaut, it is hard for the world not to sit back and think, "That's the wrong direction," and then work around us. Perhaps Americans remain largely unaware of the UN and our global prosperity because of it, in part because we've never had to live without it.

But with speeches like that, laying out a direction as such, we — along with the CEOs, banks, and farmers — may have to now factor in such a world. Unfortunately, it may only hit us when the television is $1,400, a mortgage far out of reach, and our mighty military is fighting at home and alongside despots. Is there any other takeaway from such a speech?

Alas, "Trump International" is now laughable. Sadly, it is more than just another speech and actually does matter. Eventually, the laughter turns to tears. Nice.

Jason Miciak is a past Associate Editor at Occupy Democrats, author and American attorney. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com

'Highly dubious': CNN fact-checker hits almost all of Trump's brags at UN

President Donald Trump address to the United Nations Tuesday was immediately hit by a fact-check that highlighted a long list of claims that were far-fetched — at best.

CNN Senior Reporter Daniel Dale wasted no time rattling off a response to the multiple Trump brags.

"There are a lot of issues there," Dale said. "So first of all, some of the conflicts he's counting as wars he's resolved were not actually wars at all. For example, Egypt and Ethiopia have argued over an Ethiopian dam project on the Blue Nile but they were not in a raging war in which thousands of people were being killed. Similarly, Trump has claimed that he prevented conflict between Serbia and Kosovo from resuming, but they were not in a raging war either."

Trump believes he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his intervention in military conflicts, and said the following in his speech in front of international dignitaries:

"I ended seven wars, and in all cases they were raging with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, a vicious, violent war that was, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran. Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. It included all of them, no president or prime minister, and for that matter no other country has ever done anything close to that. And I did it in just seven months. Never happened before. There's never been anything like that. I'm very honored to have done that."

Trump tried to claim certain conflicts were over, despite them continuing, Dale said.

"In addition, the conflict involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Rwanda has not actually been resolved," Dale said.

India has denied Trump is responsible for mediating its truce with neighboring Pakistan, he added.

Dale mentioned that there were even more things Trump said that were false and that "he doesn't have enough time to run through them."

Trump also said inflation has been defeated in the U.S., citing grocery prices dropping, yet inflation has risen, Americans have high grocery bills, and electricity bills are climbing in the U.S. — the opposite of what Trump said during his lengthy speech, Dale said.

He claimed that China built a lot of wind turbines for other countries but refuses use their own products — but this is incorrect and China is a leader in wind power, Dale added.

Dale also fact-checked Trump's claims that he had secured an investment of more than $17 trillion in investment in the U.S.

"Just yesterday, his own White House press secretary said it was about $9 trillion in investment," Dale said. "So I don't know where the additional $8 trillion in a day has come from. And even that initial $9 trillion the press secretary claimed is highly dubious, counting a whole bunch of things that aren't actually spending, but rather are vague commitments from various countries."

Trump dumps renowned international organization for being 'at odds' with 'America First'

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce explained Tuesday that the United States has withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, because it's not "aligned with" President Donald Trump's "America first" values.

By definition, UNESCO "promotes cooperation in education, science, culture and communication to foster peace worldwide," not strictly to meet American objectives.

Nonetheless, Bruce explained that the decision came as the result of an "executive order that the president issued...to have a review of the international organizations that we're involved in to make sure, just like with foreign aid -- are these organizations aligned with the values of the America First framework?"

She claimed that "UNESCO's decision to admit the, quote, 'state of Palestine,' unquote, as a member state is highly problematic."

Therefore, she said, "Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the continued national interest of the United States. UNESCO works to advance divisive cultural and social causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN's sustainable development goals, a global, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy."

The Trump administration previously pulled out of UNESCO in 2017 due to "anti-Israel bias." After a five-year hiatus, President Joe Biden re-entered the organization.

Watch the clip below via X.