A variety of events in the last two weeks have accentuated a trend by which the United States steadily enhances its position of leadership and authority in the West, and the underlying correlation of domestic political forces within the United States continues to move in favour of President Trump. Trump’s speech on September 23 to the United Nations was an astonishing and unique address to the representatives of the world’s 193 accredited nations by the leader of a Great Power. He excoriated the United Nations as an incompetent, ineffectual, extravagant and misguided epicentre of hypocrisy and wrong-headedness. He began with a hilarious description of the escalator stopping a few minutes before as he and his wife were ascending it, and the fact that his teleprompter was not working. He said that this was of a piece with his bid years before to renovate the United Nations building, which he said, he had offered to do to a much higher standard and at less than a quarter of the cost and on a much tighter timetable than was provided by the competitor the United Nations selected to do the work.
The rest of his critique of the international organisation was less jocular. He stated that its chief function was the production of ”empty words”, and particularly blamed it for supporting the two mortal threats to successful government in the current world, which he identified as unregulated immigration and mindless pursuit of the fraud of sustainable energy. He referred to the 15 million people who had entered the United States illegally prior to his current administration, which had entirely ended that practice. He rebuked the United Nations agencies that had subsidised illegal immigration into the United States through misdirected programmes and declared that Europe was now allowing the entry of undesirable people on a scale the continent could not survive indefinitely.
He described the whole argument that climate change was imperilling life on earth as the most monstrous hoax in the history of the world. He said that global cooling was succeeded by global warming and settled into climate change since neither of the other was actually occurring to a significant extent, and referred to the immensely costly efforts that Western Europe had made to reduce its carbon footprint by more than 30 per cent, even as the world’s carbon footprint increased by over 60 per cent. He pointed out that every warning the United Nations had issued on the subject had been proved to have been unfounded, and particularly noted that giant windmills had been a total failure, that they constantly broke, damaged the environment aesthetically, killed huge numbers of birds, were completely uneconomical, and were entirely produced by China, which did not, however, have any recourse at all to wind power itself.
He did not hesitate to commend or denounce individual countries. The new German government earned the president’s praise for reversing course on global warming and although he had embraced the president of Brazil on his way in to address the General Assembly, he condemned Brazil for corruption, oppression of political opponents, and national disintegration, but said that he and the Brazilian president would discuss it later in the day privately. Trump clearly blamed the Ukraine war on Russia and said that the United States could force Russia to desist by imposing secondary sanctions on those who financed that war by buying Russian oil and gas. But he pointed out that the European NATO allies had withheld from him until a few weeks ago the fact that they were buying Russian oil and gas in such quantities that it effectively financed the war that they were trying to stop by buying sophisticated weapons from the United States and donating them to the Ukrainians. The absurdity of this policy and the pusillanimity of the European powers in making unctuous and purposeful noises about the Ukraine war and ramping up their opposition to Russia while continuing to finance that war was so contemptible that he withheld his notorious talents at ridicule and said that he would be discussing it with the European leaders, most of whom were present, later in the afternoon.
When he spoke at the UN in his first term, the audience was restless and not especially attentive, and there was a lack of seriousness. On Tuesday, his remarks were paid close attention and he was generously applauded when he began and when he concluded. The overwhelming influence of the United States in the world was more conspicuous than at any time since late in the term of President Reagan, if not President Eisenhower. This has been enhanced by the ever greater domination of the domestic political processes of the United States by this President. The extraordinary memorial service conducted for the late conservative Republican and Christian organiser and influencer Charlie Kirk in Phoenix Arizona on Sunday, September 21, enabled President Trump, who along with most of the prominent members of his administration addressed the gathering of approximately 80,000 people, in terms that were entirely tolerant of all religious opinions, to ally his Republican administration closely with the Judeo-Christian traditions of the country.
And while it was only hinted at, the Democrats, who have generally been more concerned with the dismissal of a late-night television entertainer for tasteless remarks about Kirk than they were at the assassination of Kirk, were effectively arrayed with the forces of political extremism, violence, and godlessness. He touched upon this theme at the United Nations when he referred to Christians as the most persecuted religion in the world and denounced the critics of Israel for having forgotten October 7, 2023. The reviving economic and military power of America and the unstoppable determination of its leader weigh steadily more heavily upon the world. Despite stylistic infelicities, there is today no force on earth remotely as powerful as the decisively focused direction of the United States government, and this is an objectively good thing.
I was with Trump in the Oval Office when news came that Charlie Kirk died