United Nations: 4 Bombastic Presidents Begin Day of General Assembly Speeches

UNITED NATIONS — Making his third appearance at the U.N. General Assembly as president of the United States, President Donald Trump recounted Tuesday what he described as his administration’s strong economic achievements. He embraced the theme of nationalism and rejected the principles of multilateral cooperation often heard at the U.N.

“If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty. And if you want peace, love your nation,” he said. “Wise leaders put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations, who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors and honor the differences that make each country special and unique.”

He devoted much of his speech to disparaging China over trade disputes with the United States, Iran over its actions in the Middle East and Venezuela over that country’s economic demise under President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump warned Chinese authorities in Beijing, “We are carefully monitoring the situation in Hong Kong,” where months of anti-Beijing protests have raised fears of a Chinese crackdown.

He defended his decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and impose crippling sanctions, declaring that “the regime’s record of death and destruction is well known to us all.” And he accused Iranian authorities of “a fanatical quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.”

At the same time Trump, who has repeatedly said he was willing to talk with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, pledged that, “America is ready to embrace friendship to those who genuinely accept it.”

Trump was surrounded by like-minded company when the speeches began in the cavernous U.N. General Assembly hall on Manhattan’s East Side. He was preceded by President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, sometimes called the mini-Trump, a polarizing figure at home who, like Trump, dismisses fears about climate change and disparages critics on Twitter.

After Trump came President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, the former general who has come to symbolize the repression of the Arab Spring revolutions — although his appearance was thrown into doubt last weekend as protests erupted at home. He was followed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an autocrat who has bullied critics and whose government is a leading jailer of journalists.

Twenty-one leaders were scheduled to speak on Tuesday alone. The final one scheduled is Boris Johnson, making his United Nations debut as Britain’s prime minister. His visit came as the country’s top court delivered a stinging rebuke to Johnson, ruling he had acted unconstitutionally in suspending Parliament, an action taken as he tries to take his country of the European Union by Oct. 31.

Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain have always shared a certain affinity and style of politics, but as they shared the world stage at the U.N. Tuesday, each was also facing stark domestic troubles at home.

Trump and Johnson were both speaking at the General Assembly and met on the sidelines of the session for their second in-person meeting since the British leader took office in July. In each case, though, at least one eye was focused on gathering political clouds back in their capitals.

In Washington, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was convening a meeting with the entire House Democratic caucus amid rising momentum for impeachment, after revelations that Trump pressed Ukraine’s president for dirt on his leading Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, while blocking U.S. aid to Kyiv.

Trump has acknowledged raising Biden and corruption questions with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a July 25 telephone call. He also personally ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine in the days before he pressed Zelenskiy to investigate Biden.

The timing of the decision to block the aid and Trump’s personal involvement, which were first reported by The Washington Post, added new factors to the intense debate over the president’s effort to persuade Ukraine to examine unsubstantiated corruption accusations involving Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

In London, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Johnson acted illegally when he suspended Parliament amid the roiling debate over Britain’s plans to withdraw from the European Union. The ruling was a striking rebuke of the prime minister that means lawmakers will return to session three weeks earlier than he had scheduled.

Johnson has suffered an extraordinary series of legal political defeats since becoming prime minister, including losing his majority in the House of Commons. Britain faces an Oct. 31 withdrawal deadline to leave the European Union.

In his speech, Erdogan denounced the spread of hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, migrants and other minority groups around the world, citing the massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, as an example.

He accused “populist politicians seeking to garner votes” of “provoking these tendencies,” without singling any figure out, and condemned “prejudice, the ignorance, the bigotry as well as the attempts of marginalizing toward migrants, particularly Muslims.”

The Turkish leader described the surge in hate crimes as “a raging insanity” for which the world bore responsibility.

Erdogan, who has himself embraced autocratic and populist policies in more than 15 years in power, said that leaders today had a duty “to adopt an inclusive public rhetoric to eradicate this foe once and for all.”

“This scourge can only be defeated by the common will,” he said.

Erdogan noted that Turkey had welcomed millions of refugees from Syria, suggesting that his country was leading the world in this push. (Turkey has also pushed for resettling thousands of refugees in a swath of Syrian territory controlled by the United States and its Kurdish allies.)

He also denounced what he described as Israel’s territorial expansionism, renewed a call for the immediate establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and called for talks to resolve the long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan over the territory of Kashmir.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned a U.S. Embassy official in Moscow after several members of the Russian delegation to the General Assembly did not get visas to enter the United States, the Kremlin said Tuesday.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, called the episode a “very worrisome and unpleasant” violation of the United States’ international commitments. Putin is not attending the General Assembly, sending Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his stead.

One delegate, Konstantin Kosachyov, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, said he had applied for his visa on July 30. He accused Washington of having intentionally stalled the visa process to prevent him from coming, the Interfax news agency reported.

The State Department declined to discuss individual visa cases but said it evaluated each one “consistent with existing laws and obligations.”

The flap is the latest in a long-running dispute between Moscow and Washington over visa policy that has punctuated tensions between the nations. Russia this summer denied visas to some teachers at the Anglo-American School in Moscow and to two senators who had planned to visit.

Bolsonaro devoted part of his speech to denounce critics who accuse him of allowing rampant deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by people burning it to clear land for farming and other uses.

“We all know that all countries have problems,” Bolsonaro said. “The sensationalist attacks we have suffered due to fire outbreaks have aroused our patriotic sentiment.”

Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research agency identified 40,341 fires in the Amazon region in the first eight months of this year, about 35% higher than the average for the first eight months of each year since 2010.

He said that Brazil has a “zero tolerance policy” toward crime, including environmental crimes, but added, “The Amazon is not being devastated, nor is it being consumed by fire as the media misleadingly says.”

Bolsonaro also denounced “the politically correct,” which he said had “become a constant in public debate to expel common sense.”

“Ideology has invaded the human soul itself to expel God and the dignity which he has endowed us,” he said, before alluding to an attack he suffered while campaigning for president in 2018.

“I was cowardly stabbed because of a left-wing activist, and I only survived by a miracle,” he said.

Moving to further squeeze Maduro, the United States and multiple Latin American nations invoked a rarely used accord that will likely lead to new sanctions on his government, which they hold responsible for Venezuela’s economic collapse and a refugee crisis afflicting the region. But now they may need to defend their decision from Russia, Maduro’s key foreign ally.

The accord known as the Rio Treaty, which was easily invoked Monday by most of its 19 signatories, clears a path for Western Hemisphere states to impose new economic punishments and pressure on Maduro. (It also opens the possibility to military action, although neither the United States nor the Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, currently supports that route.)

After the accord was invoked, Maduro’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, was quoted by a Venezuelan newspaper, Tal Cual, as saying it would likely be challenged by Russia in the U.N. Security Council. Russia, which has veto power in the Security Council, is an important backer of Maduro, who was to meet with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday.

In an interview Tuesday morning, Guaidó’s chief envoy to the United States denied that the Rio Treaty could be halted. “Nobody will be able to stop it,” said the envoy, Carlos Vecchio.

“Russia has been supporting not Maduro, they have been supporting the suffering of the Venezuelans,” Vecchio said. “The international community understands that the presence of Cubans and Russians in Venezuela have made this crisis more complicated, and this is something that has to be addressed.”

In his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump again called Maduro a puppet of Cuba. Additionally, the Treasury Department issued new sanctions against three shipping companies in Panama and a fourth in Cyprus accused of transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba.

While Trump will not be seeing the presidents of China, Russia and Venezuela, who are skipping the General Assembly this year, the potential is large for awkwardness between leaders who may inadvertently see each other in the halls and conference rooms.

Diplomats who just a few weeks ago had foreseen a meeting between Trump and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran say that it is now unlikely, given the rising tensions between the two countries. Nor is a meeting predicted between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who are not known to even talk to each other.

Other potential unpleasantness may loom should Bolsonaro of Brazil encounter President Emmanuel Macron of France, who exchanged mutual insults last month via social media over Bolsonaro’s handling of fires and deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

Deteriorating relations between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea have lowered expectations for any warming at the United Nations, even if Trump seeks to bring them together. And the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, is still furious with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India over the Indian crackdown last month in the disputed territory of Kashmir.