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The Situation Room

Any Moment, Trump to Address U.N. General Assembly; Trump Addresses United Nations General Assembly. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 23, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, addressing the world, President Trump will soon deliver a major speech to the U.N., the message he plans to send on, quote, American strength and the growing divide over Palestinian statehood.

Plus, Jimmy Kimmel returns, ABC ends the late night talk show host suspension following comments he made surrounding the death of Charlie Kirk. But not everyone will open the airwaves.

And controversial advice, fallout from the medical community after President Trump links Tylenol to autism without clear cut evidence.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Pamela Brown. Wolf Blitzer is off today and you are in The Situation Room.

At any moment, President Trump will step before the world's leaders at the United Nations General Assembly. It is his first speech since reelection at the U.N., a body that he has aggressively criticized and even slashed U.S. funding to. This is the president right here. He's about to walk through. You see the first lady, Melania Trump, with President Trump just moments ago.

The White House says his speech will focus on American strength. President Trump takes the stage amid his many challenges to the world order, including his seismic shifts on trade and security with America's longtime allies.

We are following all the developments for you today and all of the reactions of this very important warning on the world stage. Our team is fanned out across the world.

Kaitlan Collins starts us off. Kaitlan, the White House is touting this as one of President Trump's most important foreign policy speeches to date. What are we expecting to hear from the president?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pam. And I should note that as the president was truly in his motorcade on the way here from Trump Tower, just a couple of blocks, as you know, in New York, he actually made some news on another front, which is this meeting that he was expected to happen with Democratic leaders and President Trump over this looming government shutdown.

The president just posted on Truth Social that that meeting is not going to be happening, that he doesn't believe it would be fruitful to do so. And we were actually standing there at the entrance when President Trump came in to see if he would speak to reporters and asked him -- I asked him why he canceled that meeting. He didn't elaborate or, or speak on that at all.

He was standing there with the first lady, Melania Trump, which you don't often see at the United Nations. But she is an important presence here as to why this o overall day and the tone of it that we're going to be watching so closely because she is going to be meeting the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenskyy. Of course, she has been someone who -- when the president met with President Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, he hand delivered a letter to him from Melania, basically appealing to him to help save the children, obviously a reference to the Ukrainian children who have been abducted into Russia, and as a Yale report recently found they were being indoctrinated and military trained.

This is all the undercurrent of this meeting here where the president is going to come for the United Nations at critical moments both for the war in Ukraine and also the war in Gaza. That's going to be another top issue for President Trump as you've seen him breaking with other nations that are here at the United Nations and say that they do want to establish a Palestinian state, something that President Trump has said quite bluntly he disagrees with these leaders, including the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, on that front.

But, overall, Pam watching this speech, as you know, you covered President Trump before, he came to the United Nations several years ago and world leaders laughed at him. They mocked him. That is not what you were going to see inside that room today. Instead, we've seen how these world leaders have instead tried to appeal to the president, bring him gifts, award him prizes, nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, all in a way to try to curtail and to try to get good coverage and favorable relationships with this president and as that goes on.

And so expect him to lean into more of what his worldview is, as it's been upended with relationships and alliances and the global trade order, as he comes before the United Nations General Assembly here this morning.

BROWN: Right.

[10:05:00]

And to your point, Kaitlan, I want to bring Christiane Amanpour because this is very different, Christiane, as Kaitlan laid out. Just walk us through how different the global circumstances are now compared to Trump's first term when he went to the U.N.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, a couple of things. In his first address in 2017, shortly after he became president the first time, he came here and basically promoted the sovereignty of nations. He went away from globalization and multilateralism and talked about how every nation, obviously, including the United States, should have their own sovereign way of doing business. I'm paraphrasing. Cut to now, he's basically interfering and intervening in every country's sovereignty.

So, that is an issue. You know, they consider him sort of bullying and ruling by fear, trying to get them to do his bidding at the pain -- on the pain of losing, you know, a lot of money and having their security threatened and having their economies threatened. That's one thing.

The second thing is that President Trump is going to double down, we understand on America first, and leave the rest of the world up to the other players. The problem is that only the United States has the throw weight to be able to affect the major issues that are confronting the world, including the U.S., so Ukraine, Russia. Russia's invasion is proceeding including right after the Alaska Summit. No stop, no nothing did Putin give to President Trump. Instead, he doubled down. And not only did he double down in Ukraine, he doubled down over NATO allies. So, after Alaska, we've had Putin test, test, test the NATO alliance and President Trump by entering drones into Poland, into Romania, and now fighter jets into Estonia.

So, this is a massive moment for NATO to have to respond, otherwise find itself on the major back foot, as Putin is testing, knowing that Trump is reluctant to punish Putin. What about sanctions? And I'll just raise this point. The Polish prime minister has said, any more incursions by what he called flying objects, will result in a shootdown after warnings.

Remember, ten years ago, practically, the Turks did that to Russia when they invaded or entered Turkish airspace. Turkey a NATO member, for 17 seconds only. But after repeated warnings, they didn't turn back. Turkey shot the planes down and there was, in the aftermath, even a Russian military death. Did that start World War III? No. It told Putin and taught him a lesson. And that is what NATO allies are desperate for right now Trump to tell Putin by now, yes, not shooting things out of the air necessarily right now, but putting down sanctions to show that, yes, even the president of the United States is serious about trying to get Putin to stop this war in Ukraine.

BROWN: So, you have the war in Ukraine, you have the war in Gaza, Jim Sciutto on that note. Many will be looking to see what the president says about the war in Gaza and these increasing calls for a Palestinian state by U.N. members.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Listen, the U.S. and Israel effectively on a shrinking island when it comes to recognition of a Palestinian state. You now have more than 145 countries represented at the General Assembly today that have already done so. And in the span of the last several days, some of America's closest allies doing so as well, Canada, the U.K., France, Australia, and describing this war in far different terms than the president does.

It was notable to me when I heard the Canadian prime minister say that the very possibility of Palestinian self-determination is being erased. That's quite a strong word, considering what we can see in Gaza today. You have communities, entire communities being erased before our eyes. That's quite a sharp difference between the U.S. and some of its closest allies, but no sign that President Trump is wavering in his support for Israel, even though in the past he's expressed some impatience with ending that war.

The other point I would highlight, to Christiane's point, is you are seeing some daylight already between the U.S. and its NATO allies on the seriousness of these Russian incursions into NATO airspace. You had, for instance, the Polish foreign minister, as Christiane noted, the NATO secretary general talk about the possibility at least of NATO --

BROWN: Jim, I'm going to interrupt because President Trump walked to the podium. Let's take a listen.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Very much appreciated.

And I don't mind making this speech without a teleprompter because the teleprompter is not working. I feel very happy to be up here with you, nevertheless, and that way you speak more from the heart. I can only say that whoever's operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.

[10:10:00]

Hello, Madam First Lady. Thank you very much for being here. And Madam President, Mr. Secretary General, first lady of the United States, distinguished delegates, ambassadors, and world leaders. Six years have passed since I last stood in this grand hall and addressed a world that was prosperous and at peace in my first term. Since that day, the guns of war have shattered the peace I forged on two continents. An era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time. And here in the United States, four years of weakness, lawlessness and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters.

One year ago, our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the Earth.

This is indeed the golden age of America. We are rapidly reversing the economic calamity we inherited from the previous administration, including ruinous price increases and record-setting inflation, inflation like we've never had before. Under my leadership, energy costs are down, gasoline prices are down, grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down, and inflation has been defeated.

The only thing that's up is the stock market, which just hit a record high. In fact, it hit a record high 48 times in the last short period of time. Growth is surging. Manufacturing is booming. The stock market, as I said, is doing better than it's ever done. And all of you in this room benefit by that, almost everybody. And importantly, workers' wagers are rising at the fastest pace in more than 60 years. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? In four years of President Biden, we had less than $1 trillion of new investment into the United States. In just eight months since I took office, we have secured commitments and money already paid for $17 trillion. Think of it, four years, less than a trillion, eight months, much more than $17 trillion is being invested in the United States, and it's now pouring in from all parts of the world.

We've implemented the largest tax cuts in American history and the largest regulation cuts in American history, making this once and again the best country on earth to do business, and many of the people in this room are investing in America, and it's turned out to be an awfully good investment during this eight-month period.

In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world. We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I'm doing the same thing again, but this time it's actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpassed my record-setting first term. On our southern border, we have successfully repelled a colossal invasion, and for the last four months, and that's four months in a row, the number of illegal aliens admitted and entering our country has been zero.

Hard to believe, because if you look back just a year ago, it was millions and millions of people pouring in from all over the world, from prisons, from mental institutions, drug dealers, all over the world they came, they just poured into our country with the ridiculous open border policy of the Biden administration. Our message is very simple. If you come illegally into the United States, you're going to jail or you're going back to where you came from, or perhaps even further than that. You know what that means.

[10:15:00]

I want to thank the country of El Salvador for the successful and professional job they've done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country. And it was under the previous administration that the number became record-setting, and they're all being taken out. We have no choice, and other countries have no choice because other countries are in the exact same situation with immigration. It's destroying their country and you have to do something about it.

On the world stage, America is respected again, like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughing stock all over the world. At the NATO summit in June, virtually, all NATO members formally committed to increase defense spending at my request from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP, making our alliance far stronger and more powerful than it was ever before.

In May, I traveled to the Middle East to visit my friends and rebuild our partnerships in the Gulf, and those valued relationships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE and other countries are now, I believe, closer than ever before.

My administration has negotiated one historic trade deal after another, including with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and many others.

Likewise, in a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars. They said they were unendable. You're never going to get them solved. Some were going for 31 years, two of them, 31, you think of it, 31 years. One was 36 years, one was 28 years. 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 a prime minister, and for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that, and I did it in just seven months. It's never happened before. There's never been anything like that. I'm very honored to have done it.

It's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them, and, sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. I ended seven Wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn't in great shape, she would've fallen, but she's in great shape. We're both in good shape. We both stood, and then a teleprompter that didn't work. These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much. And, by the way, it's working now. Just went on. Thank you. I think I should just do it the other way. It's easier. Thank you very much.

I didn't think of it at the time because I was too busy working to save millions of lives. That is the saving and stopping of these wars. But later, I realized that the United Nations wasn't there for us. They weren't there. I thought of it really after the fact, not during these negotiations, which were not easy.

That being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations? The U.N. has such tremendous potential. I've always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words, and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.

[10:20:00]

Now, after ending all of these wars and also earlier negotiating the Abraham Accords, which is a very big thing for which our country received no credit, never receives credit. Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements, but, for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with the mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and unglorious wars. What I care about is not winning prizes. It's saving lives. We saved millions and millions of lives with the seven wars, and we have others that we're working on. And you know that.

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. I'm going to give you 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 $2 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 $2 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, very sad to see, whether the U.N. can manage to play a productive role, I've come here today to offer the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world. And it's a world that we'll be much happier with a dramatically better futures within our reach.

But to get there, we must reject the failed approaches of the past and work together to confront some of the greatest threats in history. There is no more serious danger to our planet today than the most powerful and destructive weapons ever devised by man of which the United States, as you know, has many. Just as I did in my first term, I've made containing these threats a top priority, starting with the nation of Iran.

My position is very simple. The world's number one sponsor of terror can never be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapon. That's why shortly after taking office, I sent the so-called supreme leader a letter making a generous offer. I extended a pledge of full cooperation in exchange for a suspension of Iran's nuclear program. The regime's answer was to continue their constant threats to their neighbors and U.S. interests throughout the region, and some great countries that are right nearby.

Today, many of Iran's former military commanders, in fact, I can say almost all of them are no longer with us. They're dead. And three months ago, an Operation Midnight Hammer. seven American B-2 bombers dropped the 14 30,000-pound each bombs on Iran's key nuclear facility, totally obliterating everything. No other country on Earth could have done what we did. No other country has the equipment to do what we did.

[10:25:00]

We have the greatest weapons on Earth. We hate to use them, but we did something that for 22 years people wanted to do. With Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity demolished, I immediately brokered and into the 12-day war, as it's called, between Israel and Iran, with both sides agreeing to fight no longer.

As everyone knows, I have also been deeply engaged in seeking a ceasefire in Gaza. I have to get that done. I have to get it done. Unfortunately, Hamas has repeatedly rejected reasonable offers to make peace. We can't forget October 7th, can we? Now, as if to encourage continued conflict, some of this body is seeking to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. The rewards would be too great.

For Hamas terrorists for their atrocities, this would be a reward for these horrible atrocities, including October 7th, even while they refuse to release the hostages or accept to ceasefire, instead of giving to Hamas and giving so much, because they've taken so much, they have taken so much. This could have been solved so long ago. But instead of giving in to Hamas' ransom demands, those who want peace should be united with one message, release the hostages now. Just release the hostages now.

Thank you. As we have got to come together, and we will come together, got to get it done, we have to stop the war in Gaza immediately. We have to stop it. We have to get it done. We have to negotiate immediately, have to negotiate peace. We got to get the hostages back. We want all 20 back. We don't want two and four.

As you know, I got along with Steve Witkoff and others that helped us. Marco Rubio, we got most of them back. We were involved in all of them. But I always said the last 20 are going to be the hardest, and that's exactly what happened. We have to get them back now. We don't want to get back two, and then another two, and then one, and then three, have this process. No, we want them all back and we want the actually 38 dead bodies back too. Those parents came to me and they want them back, and they want them back very quickly and very badly as though they were alive. They want them. They want them every bit as much as if their son or daughter were alive.

I've also been working relentlessly stopping the killing in Ukraine. I thought that would be -- of the seven wars that I stopped. I thought that would be the easiest because of my relationship with President Putin, which had always been a good one. I thought that was going to be the easiest one. But, you know, in war, you never know what's going to happen. There are always lots of surprises, both good and bad.

Everyone thought Russia would win this war in three days, but it didn't work out that way. It was supposed to be just a quick little skirmish. It's not making Russia look good. It's making them look bad no matter what happens from here on out. This was something that should have taken a matter of days, certainly less than a week, and they've been fighting for three and a half years and killing anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 young soldiers, mostly soldiers on both sides every single week, from 5,000 to 7,000 dead young people, and some in cities, much smaller numbers where rockets are shot, where drones are dropped.

This war would never have started if I were president. This was a war that should have never happened. It shows you what leadership is, what bad leadership can do to a country. Look what happened to the United States and look where we are right now in just a short period of time. The only question now is how many more lives will be needlessly lost on both sides.

China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil, but inexcusably, even NATO countries have not cut off much Russian energy and Russian energy products, which, as you know, I found out about two weeks ago and I wasn't happy. Think of it. They're funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?

In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs, which would stop the bloodshed, I believe, very quickly.

[10:30:07]