Trump's 'egomaniacal' United Nations speech rife with 'extreme exaggeration': analysis

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, New York, U.S., September 23, 2025. REUTERS/Al Drago

After U.S. President Donald Trump gave his rambling Tuesday, September 23 speech before the United Nations General Assembly, MSNBC's Ana Cabrera brought on Joel Rubin — who served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama Administration — for analysis. And Rubin didn't mince words, attacking the speech as "completely bonkers."

But Rubin isn't the only one who is using "bonkers" and similar words to describe the rambling speech.

Slate's Fred Kaplan, in an article published that day, lays out a variety of reasons why Trump's UN address "might be the most bonkers speech of his political career."

"It was, among other things, unrelentingly, embarrassingly — and, most of all, delusionally — egomaniacal," Kaplan laments. "The whole first section claimed, in language that seemed borrowed from textbooks of Communist Party congresses, the many ways that, in just eight months, he has transformed the U.S. from the 'ruinous' 'calamity' of 'Sleep Joe Biden' to 'the hottest country anywhere in the world — indeed, the Golden Age of America, the greatest economy in the history of the world.'"

Kaplan continues, "He also repeated the, let us say, extreme exaggeration, recited in many domestic forums, that he personally ended seven wars — 'no president or prime minister, no country, has ever done anything close to that.… everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements,' adding that, while he was 'working to save millions of lives,' the United Nations — the institution that was hosting him — did nothing."

Kaplan notes that Trump also claimed that London Mayor Sadiq Khan wants to establish "Sharia law" in that city and made wild claims about green energy and climate change.

"Meanwhile, 'global warming' is 'the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,' invented by radicals who want to bring down industrialized countries while letting rules-breakers like China thrive," Kaplan observes. "Windmills 'rust and rot,' they depend on subsidies, and don't work when the wind isn't blowing. America is thriving, he said, because we're going back — so he claimed, with no supporting evidence — to 'clean beautiful coal.' His 'standing order' in the White House is 'never to use the word 'coal,' only 'clean, beautiful coal' — 'it sounds much better, doesn't it?'"

Read Fred Kaplan's full article for Slate at this link.

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