MaKail Crawford
Sep 23, 2025
Rhetoric and Subtext in Donald Trump’s Address to the United Nations
The Politics of Performance
United Nations Address
Donald Trump's September 23, 2025, address to the United Nations combines performative rhetoric, political theater, and self-promotion. Seemingly, a speech on global leadership, diplomacy, and international crises, it functions simultaneously as a self-laudatory report card on his administration's accomplishments, a denunciation of his predecessor’s policies, and a critique of the United Nations itself. Beneath the surface, President Trump reasserts his image as the decisive architect of global order, the fulfiller of peace, and the defender of American sovereignty, while framing complex geopolitical issues through the lens of personal negotiation and transactional relations. His rhetoric implores the use of casual authority, moral certainty, transactional framing and historical continuity.
President Trump begins his remarks with the technical difficulties with the teleprompter and escalator which immediately establishes continuity of actions gone awry with the United Nations. This informal jab is the setup for his United Nations punchline. He acknowledges that six years have passed since his last United Nations address, using the occasion to juxtapose the stability achieved under his first term with that of the intervening years under the Biden administration, as President Trump describes it as an administration full of “lawlessness, radicalism, and disastrous events.”
By positioning himself as a restorer of American sovereignty, he establishes the frame of a "Golden Age" restored in simply eight months of his second administration. The borders of the Golden Age framing are the fortification and resurgence of a strong economy, rising wages, and a revived military and diplomatic influence. President Trump positions himself as saying, "Under my leadership, America has reclaimed its global respect."
A key rhetorical theme was the portrayal of conflict resolution as a matter of negotiations rather than institutional diplomacy. President Trump details his engagement in seven global wars across seven months. These conflicts include: Cambodia vs. Thailand, Republic of Congo vs. Rwanda, Pakistan vs. India, Israel vs. Iran, Egypt vs. Ethiopia, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, and Kosovo vs. Serbia. Thus emphasizing his achieved outcomes with minimal United Nations involvement. His narrative positions the United Nations as largely ineffective as he relates his experience with the global organization as, "So much tremendous potential, they just write strongly worded letters and never follow them up, empty words never solve wars."
The recounting of military operations, especially Iran's nuclear facility strike dubbed 'Operation Midnight Hammer' combines cinematic imagery with factual claims to project technical and moral superiority. The emphasis on unilateral action and rapid results reinforces his narrative of leadership as unencumbered by bureaucratic hesitation and inefficiency.
President Trump repeatedly speaks on behalf of hostages and war victims as moral proof of his effectiveness, calling for the immediate return of all hostages in Gaza as he cries in imploration, "Release the hostages now, just release the hostages now, we want all twenty back, not two or four, all twenty." His plea, framed with urgency and emotional resonance, simultaneously humanizes himself and the geopolitical narrative, all the while positioning himself as the arbiter of life-and-death outcomes.
President Trump's rhetoric on migration functions criticizes globalist migration agendas and frames the United Nations as complicit in funding uncontrolled flows. His proof is in his answer to the global audience, "They're funding debit cards, food, shelter to illegal migrant aliens crossing the southern border into the United States. The United Nations needs to stop invasions, not create or finance them."
He emphasizes the human toll of uncontrolled migration. He cites kidnapped and separated children, extreme suffering en route to the border, and cartel violence which further highlights his administration’s intervention efforts as morally and practically effective. President Trump's caveat, "go back to jail, back to where you came from, or even further than that" illustrates his rhetorical combination of humor, shock value, and decisive autonomy void of Congress in determining the outcomes of alien migrant lives.
President Trump then transitions to environmental policy as political and global absurdity. He dismisses renewables as unsustainable and expensive. He contrasts them with United States of America energy production under his guidance where oil, gas, and "clean, beautiful coal" reign supreme in his country. He applauds Germany and uses them as a cautionary tale for falling victim to the 'renewables scam' while returning back to fossil fuels. He asserts that Europe’s adherence to climate dogma harmed citizens and industry alike. President Trump in front of the world's leaders states, "Energy in the United States is thriving again because we're not falling for the so-called 'renewables scam', windmills rust, rot, and cost more than any energy source ever conceived. China loves selling them [to us]." As a result, President Trump portrays tariffs and market intervention as defense mechanisms against unfair global exploitation.
Ultimately, President Trump's United Nations address fuses policy with spectacle, reality with narrative, and geopolitics with personal branding. By framing diplomacy as a series of deals, humanitarian interventions, and moral imperatives, he recasts international leadership as a theater of transactional deals and negotiations. Every anecdote on war, migration, or energy reinforces his self-portrayal as the decisive arbiter of global stability. In President Trump's world, the United States is secure, prosperous, and morally dominant. Its leader's personal engagement is both necessary and sufficient to maintain the order others fail to achieve.
Quote Highlight Reel
"Go to jail, back to where you came from, or even further than that." - President Trump
"Under my leadership, America has reclaimed global respect." - President Trump
"We'll find some but not all, either lost or dead because fo the animals that did this." - President Trump in reference to lost children
"China and India purchasing Russian oil, who the hell ever heard of that one?" - President Trump in reference to countries funding the ongoing Ukraine-Russo war
"Energy in the United States is thriving again because we're not falling for the so-called 'renewables scam'" - President Trump
"They want to make a deal. ALl I do is make deals. I've been making them all my life - I'm very good at it." - President Trump