Things didn’t go great for Donald Trump at the United Nations this week. When the president traveled to New York to address the United Nations he was beset by a series of embarrassing technical malfunctions.
The glitches began when he, First Lady Melania Trump and their entourage attempted to take an escalator to a higher floor at U.N. headquarters, only to be thwarted when the moving staircase mysteriously stopped moving. A peeved Trump looked around for answers before giving up and walking up the immobile steps, only to be greeted by a malfunctioning teleprompter once he made it to the stage. The White House later suggested that something nefarious might have been afoot during the visit, with Trump claiming a “triple sabotage.”
The bizarre scene was, of course, like catnip for late night hosts, who all weighed in with a barrage of mocking jokes in their monologues on Wednesday night (Sept. 24). Stephen Colbert couldn’t even wait that long to pile on, instead opening The Late Show last night with one of his patented cold open song spoofs entitled “Was It Sabotage?”
Cued to the Beastie Boys’ 1994 Ill Communication rager “Sabotage,” the clip opened with a news report about how some White House officials wondered if the escalator/prompter breakdowns were the work of saboteurs. After a clip of Fox News’ Jesse Watters speculating that the fix was in, the clip shifted to the iconic pounding beat and chiming guitar licks from the Beasties song as a snot-nosed sing-alike snarled, “I can’t stand it/ Antifa planned it/ Feeling so irate, can’t escalate,” over the now familiar footage of Trump walking up the escalator and then looking around for help when his progress is stopped.
“I won’t climb, ’cause I’m a billionaire/ And everybody knows that I don’t do stairs,” it continued alongside archival footage of Trump, 79, tripping and falling up the big stairs of Air Force One. “Radical left turned off my steps/ Now I have to give my big a– reps/ Oh my God, my cankles throb/ It’s escalator sabotage!”
According to NBC News, the U.N. said the escalator likely stopped when a White House videographer accidentally triggered a safety mechanism, halting the stairs. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres’ office said on Wednesday that it has ordered a “thorough investigation” into the three incidents Trump complained about in a nearly 400-word rant on his Truth Social platform.
Trump called them “three very sinister events,” in seeming reference to the escalator, the teleprompter issue and audio problems he endured during a speech to the general assembly in which Trump told the dignitaries from Western nations that “your countries are going to hell” due to what he said was the danger of immigration.
“This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN,” Trump wrote. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves. I’m sending a copy of this letter to the Secretary General, and I demand an immediate investigation.” A U.N. spokesperson said the escalator’s safety mechanism was likely triggered by a White House videographer who stepped on before the president and first lady that is designed to “prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing.”
That explanation did not seem to mollify Trump, who complained, “It stopped on a dime. It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster.” Trump claimed it was “absolutely sabotage” and said that the “people that did it should be arrested!”
Watch the Late Show “Was It Sabotage?” video below.