PinnedUpdated Sept. 23, 2025, 12:18 p.m. ETPresident Trump questioned the United Nations’ mission and lectured its member nations on Tuesday in a meandering speech before the General Assembly. Boasting about his record and assailing the U.N. as ineffective in a nearly hourlong address, he sought to portray himself as the only leader who could solve the world’s problems.As the General Assembly convened on its 80th anniversary with wars raging in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, Mr. Trump claimed that he had resolved conflicts around the world while the U.N. had done nothing. “Sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any on them,” Mr. Trump said.While taking credit for ending conflicts between Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, and Armenia and Azerbaijan, Mr. Trump again blamed his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden, for Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. He also said China and India were financing the war because they purchase oil from Russia, and he said he was ready impose more tariffs on Russia if it does not agree to a cease-fire, but only if Europe ends all purchases of Russian oil and gas.Going well beyond his allotted 15 minutes, the president veered off script with dubious claims about immigration and green energy, warning that mass migration and a shift to renewable energy were a “double-tailed monster” destroying European nations. Besides taking shots at Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump targeted other political opponents and close NATO allies that have recognized a Palestinian state.Mr. Trump repeated his demand that “we want all the hostages back” from Gaza without mentioning the issues of Israel’s efforts to take Gaza City or his past promises to get more food and aid to the enclave. Israel’s blockade of aid to the enclave amid a growing humanitarian crisis has drawn accusations of genocide.He spent 10 minutes dismissing climate change as a hoax, despite a widespread scientific consensus that it is real. The global average temperature has already increased by over 1 degree Celsius since the start of the industrial era.In his welcoming speech, the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, warned about the dangerously chaotic state of the world while providing a measure of hope that unity and diplomacy can bring stability.“People everywhere are demanding something better, and we owe them something deserving of their trust,” Mr. Guterres said.He also touched upon climate change, something he has made a priority for his legacy, and his ambitious restructuring plan known as UN80.Among the highlights today:In his welcoming speech, the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, warned about the dangerously chaotic state of the world while providing a measure of hope that unity and diplomacy can bring stability. “People everywhere are demanding something better, and we owe them something deserving of their trust,” Mr. Guterres said. He also touched upon climate change, something he has made a priority for his legacy, only to have Mr. Trump deride it as a “hoax” minutes later.Other notable speakers on Tuesday include President Emmanuel Macron of France, who led a two-state solution conference on Monday that focused on Palestinian statehood; Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, where Israel recently bombed Hamas targets; King Abdullah II of Jordan; and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.The U.N. Security Council will convene back-to-back sessions on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine this afternoon, with many foreign ministers in attendance. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who is expected to meet with Mr. Trump on Tuesday, will address the Council. The Council has not acted in either conflict, blocked by the veto power of Russia in the case of Ukraine and of the United States in support of Israel.Somini Sengupta contributed reporting.Sept. 23, 2025, 12:15 p.m. ETPresident Trump said he shared an embrace with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesPresident Trump appeared to offer an olive branch to Brazil on Tuesday, signaling he planned to meet with the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, next week for the first time since a diplomatic crisis erupted between the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous nations.During his address at the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Trump said he had shared a brief embrace with the Brazilian leader, insisted he had no hard feelings toward Mr. Lula and said the two leaders would talk.“At least for 39 seconds, we had excellent chemistry,” Mr. Trump said of his encounter with Mr. Lula. “It’s a good sign.”His comments followed a scathing opening address by Mr. Lula at the Assembly that appeared to take indirect aim at the American leader and his demands to halt Brazil’s criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. Mr. Bolsonaro was recently convicted of overseeing a coup plot after losing the 2022 presidential elections, and was sentenced to 27 years in prison.Mr. Trump has used punitive measures against Brazil in an attempt to coerce Brazil into dropping the criminal case against Mr. Bolsonaro. The United States has hit Brazil with 50 percent tariffs and imposed sanctions on the Supreme Court justice who oversaw the criminal case against Mr. Bolsonaro, along with the justice’s wife.Sept. 23, 2025, 12:14 p.m. ETAn oil platform in the North Sea east of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2014.Credit...Pool photo by Andy BuchananIn an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Trump reiterated a criticism about Britain not drilling more oil in the North Sea that he has stated previously — including on trips there in recent months.He blamed excessive tax rates for the decline in production in the North Sea, although it has been waning for decades, and railed against green energy. Mr. Trump said countries were losing their “powerful edge in oil and gas” and addressed Britain specifically.“Oh, the North Sea, I know it so well,” he said. “They have tremendous oil left and, more importantly, they have tremendous oil that hasn’t even been found yet and what a tremendous asset for the United Kingdom.”He said he hoped Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, was listening to his address and admitted that he had made his point before. “Three days in a row, that’s all he heard: North Sea oil,” Mr. Trump admitted in his speech, referring to discussions with Mr. Starmer on a previous visit.Britain’s tax on oil companies is steep — it’s one of the highest rates globally. But oil output from the North Sea has been in rapid decline over recent decades, and production is expected to continue to fall.Mr. Starmer’s Labour government had campaigned on a pledge to invest in clean energy, including wind and nuclear power. The world has reached record levels of heat, and scientists say this is driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels.Mr. Starmer increased the tax rate on profits from oil and gas extraction to 78 percent — one of the highest rates globally — after he took office. But taxes had increased significantly under the previous Conservative government, when oil prices surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As oil prices have fallen, other countries in Europe have reduced their taxes on oil companies. Britain has not.Mr. Starmer faces pressure from Nigel Farage, the right-wing populist leader of Reform U.K., Britain’s anti-immigration party, and a longtime ally of Mr. Trump. Reform, which wants to scrap Britain’s target of net zero emissions by 2050, won 14 percent of the vote in last year’s general election and has recently surged in opinion polls.Since the mid-2000s, oil and gas production in the North Sea has fallen significantly. By 2024, Britain’s oil output had diminished to 653,000 barrels a day, from more than one million five years ago, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy.The British government has said it is essential that the energy sector invests in wind and other forms of renewable energy — both to meet environmental goals and to replace the jobs lost from declining oil production.Mr. Trump insisted in his address to the U.N. on Tuesday that green energy, coupled with immigration, is ruining Europe, including marring the landscape. On Britain, he added, “I want to stop seeing them ruining their beautiful Scottish and English countryside with windmills and massive solar panels.”Sept. 23, 2025, 12:00 p.m. ETPresident Trump used a U.N. address to repeat his claim that he has ended seven wars around the world. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesPresident Trump repeated his claim that he had ended seven “unendable wars” wars during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, saying, “It’s too bad I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.”Mr. Trump, who has a history of boasting about his role as a resolver of world conflicts as he campaigns for a Nobel Peace Prize, also disparaged the work of the United Nations, a body that he said “did not even try to help in any of them.”“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” he asked. All the institution does, he added, is “write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.”In some of the instances that Mr. Trump claims to have brokered peace, the warring parties have credited him with calming hostilities or advancing talks toward a peace agreement. But his role is disputed or less clear in others. And in two major conflicts, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s efforts so far have failed.Here’s a deeper look at Mr. Trump’s peace claims.Armenia and AzerbaijanMr. Trump brought the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the White House in August to sign a joint declaration aimed at bringing their long-running conflict closer to an end.Though it was not a peace deal, it was the first commitment toward reaching an agreement since violence broke out in the 1980s.Leaders of both countries praised Mr. Trump for stepping in, but Azerbaijan continues to demand that Armenia change its Constitution to remove mentions of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.Azerbaijan also still occupies small areas of Armenia, citing security concerns, and the countries have not agreed on a shared border.Democratic Republic of Congo and RwandaIn June, the top diplomats from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo went to the Oval Office in Washington to sign a peace agreement aimed at ending a war that has raged for over three decades.Mr. Trump called the accord “a glorious triumph.”But talks on a comprehensive agreement have since faltered, and deadly fighting has continued.India and PakistanMr. Trump has taken credit for mediating an end to a military conflict between the two nuclear powers that broke out anew in May after a terrorist attack in Kashmir killed 26 civilians.India has acknowledged the United States played a role in mediating the conflict, but says it negotiated an end to the fighting directly with Pakistan.India claims that Pakistani officials asked for cease-fire talks because of pressure from India’s military assaults. Pakistan denies this and has thanked Mr. Trump for helping to end the hostilities.The differing accounts have contributed to a deterioration of relations between Washington and New Delhi, which is also playing out in Mr. Trump’s trade war.Israel and IranAfter 12 days of military strikes in June that included U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, Mr. Trump abruptly announced a cease-fire agreement. He said that the United States had mediated it and claimed that Israel had turned around its warplanes at his behest.Although neither side has disputed the American role in the truce, its durability remains in question.While American intelligence has determined that the U.S. bombings badly damaged Iran’s most advanced nuclear enrichment site, some experts believe that Tehran could eventually resume enriching uranium, which is needed to build a nuclear weapon, at other sites.Both Israel and the United States have vowed never to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon.Cambodia and ThailandThe two Southeast Asian neighbors engaged this summer in several days of fighting on their border that killed at least 42 people and displaced more than 300,000, one of the bloodiest conflicts between them in decades.At the time, the Trump administration was discussing trade deals with a host of countries, and Mr. Trump said he had told the leaders of Thailand and Cambodia that he would stop trade talks unless they agreed to a cease-fire.Two days later, officials met in Malaysia for talks organized by Malaysian and American officials and reached a deal to pause hostilities.Though the fighting has stopped, critics of Mr. Trump’s approach say his intervention did not address the underlying causes of the conflict.Egypt and EthiopiaEgypt and Ethiopia are not engaged in a military conflict, but there are fears a diplomatic dispute between them over Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam might start a war.Mr. Trump’s diplomacy has done little to resolve the dispute. Ethiopia has announced that it completed the dam, which officially opened this month. Egypt and Sudan oppose the project, fearing it will limit the flow of water from the Nile River to their countries.Kosovo and SerbiaMr. Trump also cited Kosovo and Serbia in his speech.In 2020, the two nations signed an agreement to pursue economic engagement in the Oval Office. But no peace agreement has been signed between them.The dispute stems from the status of Kosovo, which declared its independence 15 years ago, almost a decade after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign in 1999 that drove Serb forces, then engaged in the brutal mistreatment of ethnic Albanians, from Kosovo.While an independent Kosovo has been recognized by the United States and many European countries, Serbia — as well as its key allies, Russia and China — still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence.Sept. 23, 2025, 11:20 a.m. ETThe demonstrators blocked an intersection near the United Nations building in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday.Credit...Carlos Barria/ReutersOutside the United Nations building in Manhattan on Tuesday morning, police officers swarmed a cluster of anti-Trump protesters ahead of the president’s speech to diplomats and world leaders at the General Assembly.Dozens of demonstrators were milling in the streets near the U.N. roughly an hour before President Trump’s speech began. A dozen sat on the ground at the intersection of 42nd Street and Second Avenue, further snarling traffic during what is known as Gridlock Week in Midtown East.The protesters held signs that read, “Trump is the emergency.” One handmade sign said, in capital letters, “Dear world, we’re sorry.” Police officers wearing bicycle helmets zip-tied the hands of about a dozen protesters behind their backs and ushered them out of the roadway.Many of the demonstrators appeared to be part of Rise and Resist, a nonviolent advocacy group that formed after Mr. Trump’s election to his first term in 2016. One group member, Alexis Danzig, stood in a line with other arrested protesters as they waited to be loaded into a police van on Tuesday morning. Ms. Danzig, her hands tied behind her back, said she had traveled from her home in Saugerties, N.Y., to protest Mr. Trump’s speech.“Other countries need to know that people who reside in the United States do not approve of Trump,” Ms. Danzig, 64, said from behind a police barrier. “Trump is a menace to democracy everywhere.”Another protester, Barry Spaulding, said he had been motivated to attend the protest in part because of the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, which was pulled off the air last week after comments he made about the man accused of killing the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (Mr. Kimmel’s show will resume on Tuesday, ABC announced Monday.)“I thought, especially with what’s happened this week, I better use my right to free speech before we lose it,” said Mr. Spaulding, 73, who lives in Manhattan. He carried a sign that said, “Fascist,” accompanied by a photo of Mr. Trump’s head.Naomi Braine, who coordinated some of the protest’s logistics for Rise and Resist, said the organization had taken to the streets to encourage U.N. member countries “to block Donald Trump, to turn their backs upon him, to no longer treat him as a valid member of the international community.”Mx. Braine, 61, who uses they/them pronouns, said it was important that world leaders had recognized Palestinian statehood in a summit on Monday.Mr. Trump “disagrees” with the recognition, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced on Monday.Sept. 23, 2025, 11:17 a.m. ETEdward WongDiplomatic correspondent reporting from the United Nations in New YorkOne of Trump’s notable lines referred to a core foundational value of the United States: “Let us defend free speech and free expression.” But critics say Trump has promoted a government-led assault on free speech, free expression and the free press, especially in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist.Sept. 23, 2025, 11:10 a.m. ETEnding after roughly 57 minutes, President Trump’s address was the longest speech he has delivered before the U.N. General Assembly, easily eclipsing the length of previous speeches delivered in his first term.Sept. 23, 2025, 11:09 a.m. ETEdward WongDiplomatic correspondent reporting from the United Nations in New YorkIn his final words before the General Assembly, Trump praised the histories of conquest and exploration by ancestors and said people must defend their homelands.Credit...Vincent Alban/The New York TimesSept. 23, 2025, 11:04 a.m. ETTrump linked migration and renewable energy as the forces “destroying a large part of the free world.”Sept. 23, 2025, 11:03 a.m. ETEdward WongDiplomatic correspondent reporting from the United Nations in New YorkTrump criticized the Brazilian government for what he called unfair political persecution. He imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil in large part for the legal case against Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, a conservative politician who was recently convicted by the country’s Supreme Court for attempting a coup. Trump considers Bolsonaro a friend and ally.Sept. 23, 2025, 11:03 a.m. ETWorld leaders have a time limit for their speeches at the General Assembly. When they go over, a red light on the podium goes off. Trump is well over his time limit but the light is not on yet.Sept. 23, 2025, 11:02 a.m. ETTrump said Christianity is the “most persecuted religion on the planet.”Sept. 23, 2025, 11:02 a.m. ETMore than 45 minutes in, the president has turned to tariffs for the first time, saying he was using them to “defend our sovereignty.” He noted that Brazil was paying tariffs for a series of supposed political offenses, but he said he will meet Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:58 a.m. ETThe idea of the carbon footprint that Trump ridiculed was developed by oil companies as part of a public relations campaign.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:57 a.m. ETGoing off script again, the president spent 10 minutes on “the global warming hoax.” He celebrated the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and “clean, beautiful coal.” He talked about American energy exports and added, “The United States has been taken advantage by much of the world, but not anymore.”Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesSept. 23, 2025, 10:55 a.m. ETThe clean air Trump is celebrating in the United States is a product of environmental regulations that the Trump administration is gutting.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:54 a.m. ETTrump is now at triple his time limit for speaking. His speech has largely been a lecture about how the U.N. and other countries were failing.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:54 a.m. ETTrump accused environmentalists of wanting to “kill all the cows.” There was no evidence for that claim.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:54 a.m. ETTrump undermined scientific consensus on climate change, saying it was “made by stupid people.” In fact, the global average temperature has already increased by over 1 degree Celsius since the start of the industrial era. “if you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” he said.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:51 a.m. ETTrump was correct that his administration has had success driving down illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. There were still some migrants crossing the border, however, despite Trump’s assertion that nobody was now crossing into the United States. Border officials recorded more than 9,700 apprehensions at the border in August, according to Customs and Border Protection. That pales in comparison with the more than 107,000 apprehensions in August last year.Credit...Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSept. 23, 2025, 10:50 a.m. ETTrump called climate change the “greatest con job” ever perpetrated on the world.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:50 a.m. ETTrump has often made the false claim that nations are intentionally directing migrants to the United States. Trump and his senior aides have turned to that attack more frequently as the number of migrants arriving from far-away nations, rather than just Latin America, has grown in recent years. That global migration is, however, fueled by poverty, war and the pandemic.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:49 a.m. ETTrump accused China of not building wind farms in its territory. That was incorrect. China’s expansion of wind and solar capacity overtook coal capacity in 2025, according to a recent analysis.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:48 a.m. ETAfter dismissing renewable energy, Trump praised Germany for returning to nuclear energy and more fossil fuels. “All green is all bankrupt,″ he said.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:48 a.m. ETTrump claimed that the U.N. was financing waves of migrants illegally crossing into the United States. In fact, the U.N.’s refugee agency and UNICEF offer assistance like shelter, food and clean water to refugees around the world. They run refugee camps in Turkey, Greece and Lebanon for the waves of refugees who leave countries like Iraq and Syria to journey to Europe.Credit...Louisa Gouliamaki/ReutersSept. 23, 2025, 10:46 a.m. ET“We will blow you out of existence,″ he warned anyone moving drugs out of Venezuela. Yet, for all the time Trump has spent on immigration and the “supreme power of the United States military,” he has not turned to the technological, military or economic challenge of China; arms control with Russia; or any of the usual items on the U.S. international agenda.Sept. 23, 2025, 10:42 a.m. ETTrump has now gone off script. And he has gone well beyond the allotted time -- not that anyone would enforce limits when the president of the United States comes to speak in the well of the United Nations.