UN responds to Trump about escalator malfunction

Several minor incidents occurred when President Trump went to address the United Nations.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

That saying is called Hanlon’s Razor.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

This was said by Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond movie.

There were several problems that rarely happen, but they are all pretty minor.

Issue #1:  President Macron has to walk.

The car of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, encounters a road that is blocked off due to President Trump’s motorcade coming through.  Macron calls Trump to get transportation to the UN building, but Trump tells him to walk.  Macron and his entourage don’t seem to mind the half-hour walk through New York City.  The cops were friendly and helpful.

 

Issue #2:  President Trump has to walk.

In the UN building, the escalator stops when President Trump and Melania were half-way up.  The current theory is that a videographer bumped the emergency stop button for the escalator.  Maybe, but those buttons are usually placed to avoid accidents.

Issue #3:  President Trump’s teleprompter doesn’t work.

Trump was to address world leaders, and his teleprompter malfunctions?  That doesn’t seem accidental.   A teleprompter is just a screen to display the text, with an operator managing the scrolling to keep pace with the speaker.  This was a permanent installation at the podium in the main assembly area of the United Nations.  The teleprompter would not be mounted on a rickety tripod with A/V cables taped to the floor.

Issue #4:  President Trump’s audio was mixed with a translator.

The UN has a host of translators to provide running audio in the listener’s preferred language.  The audio feed from one of those translators was added to Trump’s audio.  That’s what I heard on the Youtube video of the speech on news channels.  It was distracting and lasted a few minutes. 

Issue #1 is strange because NYC gets dignitaries bound for the UN all the time.  That seems like Trump was snubbing Macron for some reason.  Not cool.

Issue #2 and #3 are interesting because those would have been major issues for Joe Biden.  The lurching stop could have toppled him.  It isn’t likely that Biden could get very far on an unscripted speech, but like Trump, he’d probably have a paper backup copy.  Trump’s speech was to last 15 minutes, but he felt unconstrained and vexed at the problems, so he gave a stinging 60 minute address.

Issue #4 would not have been apparent to Trump, only to the viewers. 

Issues 2, 3 and 4 seem like the petty acts of low-level UN employees.  The UN must have security cameras all over the place and computer logs of everything.  If the Secret Service can’t find the people responsible, then the UN has security issues or the Secret Service has personnel issues.

Minor issues like this are like a “Check Engine” light on a car.  Since nothing bad happened, the warning can be ignored, but that is not prudent.  The United Nations administrators have security, personnel, maintenance or training issues that must be addressed before those problems are exploited in a serious way.