US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticised the United Nations for what he called failures on migration and climate change, accusing the body of creating problems instead of solving them.
“Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should, too often, it’s actually creating new problems for us to solve,” Trump told the UN General Assembly. “The best example is the number one political issue of our time — the crisis of uncontrolled migration.”
He accused the UN of “funding an assault on Western countries and their borders,” citing figures that in 2024 the organisation budgeted USD 372 million in cash assistance to support an estimated 624,000 migrants heading to the United States.
Trump also dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” rejecting decades of scientific research.
“It used to be global cooling. If you look back in the 1920s and 1930s, they said global cooling would kill the world. Then they said global warming would kill the world. But then it started getting cooler. So now they just call it climate change, because if it goes higher or lower, whatever happens, it’s climate change,” Trump said.
“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong,” he added. “They were made by stupid people that doomed their countries’ fortunes. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”
His remarks come ahead of the 2025 UN Climate Summit, where nations are expected to present updated climate action plans.
