In Bizarre Reversal, Trump Seeks to Empower UN

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Despite regularly ridiculing the United Nations and repeatedly proposing a scaled-back U.S. role in it, President Donald Trump struck a very different tone this week, calling for empowering the controversial UN dictators club to somehow “solve” the North Korea issue, Syria, and other problems. Speaking at a meeting of UN Security Council diplomats convened at the White House on Monday, Trump demanded that the UN be ready to impose new sanctions if Communist Chinese-backed North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un does not cooperate. Ironically, the dictatorship in Beijing — North Korea’s strongest ally — holds a veto-wielding seat on the UN Security Council. But Trump nevertheless indicated he wants that same global body to wield even more power.

Trump’s comments amid the meeting Monday suggested that the White House has reversed course and betrayed the president’s most loyal supporters yet again. Despite correctly identifying the UN as an enemy of freedom and America, Trump now appears to believe the UN should be given teeth. Among other jobs, he hopes to see the UN help rein in the North Korean regime. “The status quo in North Korea is also unacceptable,” Trump told the UN Security Council ambassadors representing the 15 governments and dictatorships — including some close allies of the North Korean dictator — at the April 24 White House meeting. “The Council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

The President, who campaigned on an anti-globalist platform, also suggested that the scandal-plagued globalist body should somehow be responsible for “solving” the issue of North Korea, as if the UN were some sort of global government in charge of dictating solutions and policies to national governments. “This is a real threat to the world, whether we want to talk about it or not,” Trump said. “North Korea is a big world problem and it’s a problem that we have to finally solve. People put blindfolds on for decades and now it’s time to solve the problem.” And Trump vowed that under his watch, the UN would start taking on the expanded role he appears to envision for it.

Describing the UN Monday as an “underperformer,” he told the UN Security Council ambassadors that the global body “doesn’t like taking on certain problems.” “The United Nations is an underperformer, but it has huge potential,” Trump told the attendees after warning during the campaign of a globalist “cabal” with “international bankers” seeking what he called “global government” for humanity. “I think that the United Nations has tremendous potential.” Indeed, former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, one of the architects of the UN and a committed establishment globalist, also believed that. In his 1950 book War or Peace, he said the UN at that time was just a “primitive stage.” Eventually, he said, the UN Charter would allow the emergence of what he described as “world government” and “world federation.”

The implication of Trump’s comments was clear: the UN should be “taking on” even more real and imagined problems than it currently does. “It hasn’t lived up to the potential,” Trump continued, outlining a vision of a radically expanded UN. “I see a day when there’s a conflict where the United Nations, you get together, and you solve the conflict. You just don’t see the United Nations, like, solving conflicts. I think that’s going to start happening now. I can see it. And the United Nations will get together and solve conflicts. It won’t be two countries, it will be the United Nations mediating or arbitrating with those countries.”

“So I see fantastic potential and fantastic things ahead for the United Nations,” Trump added.

“But as we look around the world, it’s clear that there is much work for you to achieve,” the president told the UN Security Council diplomats and their spouses. “You’re going to be very busy people, I suspect, over these coming months and years.”

The only minor rebuke Trump offered of the UN was on the cost. Trump argued that costs have “gone out of control,” that U.S. taxpayers shoulder too much of the burden, and that the current arrangement is unfair. “But I will say this,” Trump added. “If we do a great job, I care much less about the budget, because you’re talking about peanuts compared to the important work you’re doing. You really are. You’re talking about the most important things ever. And I must say, I’m a budget person. You see the way I’m talking about NATO, the same thing, but if you do a great job at the United Nations, I feel much differently about it because we’re talking pennies compared to the kind of lives and money that you’ll be saving.”

That is all very bad news for Americans who believed Trump’s campaign promises to promote Americanism and reject globalism. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Trump blasted the UN over and over again. “The United Nations is not a friend of democracy, it’s not a friend to freedom, it’s not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all know, it has its home,” the real-estate mogul told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) while on the campaign trail. Earlier in the campaign, Trump also ridiculed the UN as a “political game,” calling for “smaller numbers,” presumably a reference to downsizing the globalist organization. He also vowed to “cancel” the UN Paris Agreement on “climate,” which has still not happened.

On Monday, Trump also spoke with Communist Chinese dictator Xi Jinping about the North Korea issue. According to the White House, Trump “criticized North Korea’s continued belligerence and emphasized that Pyongyang’s actions are destabilizing the Korean Peninsula.” The White House claimed that Xi shared Trump’s sense of urgency about the alleged threat posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. And Xi apparently even “committed to strengthen coordination in achieving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” However, Beijing’s mass-murdering regime is essentially the puppet master behind Pyongyang, suggesting the Chinese Communists believe they are playing Trump for a fool.

Indeed, despite Trump claiming to believe the UN will help rein in communist regimes, the UN was literally founded by communists. Those communist founders included even leading U.S. representative Alger Hiss, who served as secretary general of the conference that founded the UN and created the UN Charter. Hiss was later convicted in court over charges related to his Soviet espionage. And on the other side of the table from Hiss was mass-murdering Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his Soviet minions. Today, the Kremlin and Beijing hold seats on the Security Council. The current UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, is a known Socialist operative, having led the global alliance of communist and socialist parties known as the Socialist International.

But it seems the globalist strategy to dupe Trump into supporting the UN — outlined by globalist Council on Foreign Relations “Global Governance” boss Stewart Patrick shortly after Trump took office — may have worked. Basically, Patrick and his CFR cohorts proposed that the Socialist Guterres try to hoodwink Trump into believing that the dictators club could be used by the Trump administration to “get things done.” Citing the George W. Bush administration, Patrick claims that “this message could resonate with Donald Trump.” And indeed, it appears that it might have, at least if Trump’s comments this week are any guide.

Establishment-minded analysts have also noticed the trends. Foreign Policy, for example, a globalist-oriented publication, noted that from day one, the Trump administration “screamed its desire to emasculate the United Nations, pushing for draconian budget cuts that would kneecap the world body.” However, under Trump’s UN envoy, Nikki Haley, the UN has become “one of the administration’s favored soapboxes, providing an unexpected boost to the organization the White House set out to marginalize.” Even foreign ambassadors to the UN were pleased with how the Trump administration is turning out when it comes to the UN and globalism.

In what may have been one of his most alarming comments, Trump suggested he viewed the UN’s potential more favorably than “any other candidate in the last 30 years would have even thought to say.” Considering the fact that Obama openly praised the UN and demanded further surrender of U.S. sovereignty to it, and President George H.W. Bush promised a “New World Order” where the vision of the “UN’s [communist] founders” would be imposed by the UN’s scandal-plagued “peacekeeping” machine, that is really saying something.

Trump apologists have suggested the president may just be making the globalist comments as a negotiating tool — after all, his administration has floated plans to slash UN funding by more than half, in addition to potential executive orders cutting back U.S. involvement in it. However, considering the growing number of key promises and pledges that Trump has walked back in recent weeks, that appears less and less likely. One thing is certain: This is not what Trump’s legions of supporters voted for in November, and it is not what Trump promised on the campaign trail.

Photo of President Trump during working lunch with UN Security Council ambassadors: AP Images

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.