President Donald Trump complained for minutes on end during his address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday about what he perceived as a real estate snub in the early 2000s to renovate the U.N. building in New York City, New York.
“Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York known as Donald J. Trump bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex, I remember it so well,” Trump said in his address to close to 150 world leaders.
“I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It'd be beautiful, I used to talk about ‘I'm going to give you the best of everything; you're going to have mahogany walls, they're going to give you plastic.’”
Trump did, in fact, make a bid in the early 2000s to renovate the U.N. building, though his offer was ultimately rejected, a rejection that reportedly enraged Trump, who went on to appeal the rejection, and even make an offer to waive his fee should he be awarded the contract.
Trump went on to complain about his rejected offer before the several dozen world leaders, alleging that the company that was ultimately awarded the project “did not know what they were doing when it came to construction,” and that he had accurately predicted that the project would see “massive cost overruns.
“I turned out to be right, they had massive cost overruns and spent between $2 trillion and $4 billion on the building, and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them!” Trump continued.
“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!”