High stakes drama on display over the years at the UN General Assembly

0:00It's Consider This from NPR, where every day we go deep on one big news story. High-stakes drama, theatrics, a captive audience. I'm not talking about covering the Oscars or Hollywood, but stay with me. The United Nations General Assembly. Some think of it as a button-down affair. But over the years, NPR's diplomacy correspondent, Michele Kelemen, has seen sparks fly. Take 2006, for example, the first year she covered the gathering. As is tradition, the U.S. president spoke on the first day.

0:34Michele Kelemen:George Bush was speaking. It was, you know, the war in Iraq was raging. He was raising concerns about Iran's nuclear program. The next day, Hugo Chavez, who was Venezuela's president, came up to the podium. He said the devil was in the room the day before. You know, and the room was just, you know, all these other diplomats, all these other world leaders were kind of laughing along with him. And it was just this really a big drama on the world stage. And drama was on display last year, too. Your countries are going to hell. The United Nations is funding an assault on Western countries. That is, of course, President Trump speaking at the General Assembly last September, blaming the organization for mass migration and a refugee crisis.

1:25The U.N. is supposed to stop invasions, not create them and not finance them. Consider this. Despite being instrumental in the founding of the United Nations, in recent years, the U.S. has marginalized the organization. Coming up, we hear how one reporter has seen that happen over the past two decades of covering the U.N. General Assembly.

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2:59It's Consider This from NPR. Next week, world leaders will gather in New York City at the United Nations General Assembly. President Trump has often attacked the organization and questioned its legitimacy. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, we hear from NPR's Michelle Kellerman how the U.S.'s relationship with the U.N. has changed over the years. I began our conversation by asking Michelle what she recalled about last year's assembly when Trump made his lack of respect for the U.N. so clear. The U.N. is a place where they talk about all these issues to resolve things, right? I mean, refugees is one of the issues.

3:38There is a record number of refugees in the world. And the Trump administration was coming in and having a very anti-refugee message, including to all these countries. And some of them are housing many more, obviously, many more refugees than the U.S. has. So he kind of came in and lectured them about sovereignty, about refugee issues. The U.N. is also very dedicated to things like climate change and working together to fight poverty, working together to help women and girls. And, you know, the Trump administration looks at those as kind of woke DEI agenda and dismisses all of that. So I think you had a president.

4:19And it's interesting because Donald Trump, when he first came to the U.N. the first time around, the first term, he used to kind of like this, you know, being at the center of attention, being on the world stage. He's from New York, so he'd like to go back to New York. But last year felt a little bit different. He was annoyed that the escalator kind of suddenly stopped when he and Melania were on their way into the General Assembly. He was annoyed that the teleprompter wasn't working at the beginning. He was a little more frustrated. And you also have kind of the agenda that he's come in with, which is very anti-multilateralism, right?

4:59Michele Kelemen:It's all about sovereignty. It's all about America first and not about helping refugees or about helping women and girls and all the other issues that they're doing. Well, what other General Assembly stand out for that kind of drama, like these larger than life characters? What do you recall? 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, it was his first and only speech to the U.N. General Assembly, though he had been in power for 40 years. And, you know, normally these speeches are supposed to be about 15 minutes long. He went for an hour and a half. And, you know, I have to tell you this story since, you know, we had this booth near the interpreters.

5:40And at the U.N., there's six languages, so they all have to be interpreted. And Gaddafi had his own interpreter for most of the time. But the guy kind of conked out toward the end because it was just going on so long. There wasn't any prepared remarks.

5:58Michele Kelemen:And then, you know, an official one, English one, had to come in at the last minute.

6:09Wearing a brown robe and a huge black pin of Africa on his chest, Colonel Gaddafi used his U.N. debut to rail against what he sees as the inequalities of the U.N. system. And when I walked out in the hallway after that speech, I saw one of these interpreters just shaking her head, talking about how unprofessional that was. You know, it's hard to do simultaneous interpretation. And they have these rules that they can only do 15 minutes at a time. And usually you swap over.

6:41Michele Kelemen:But this guy kind of lasted almost the hour and a half. But the last few minutes just kind of conked out. Wow. I wonder where that guy is now. And what he remembers from that day. Well, Gaddafi is no longer on this earth, having been killed during the uprising there years later. So I don't know what happened to his interpreter. I wonder behind the scenes, Michelle, what is it like on the ground? Like, is it really chaotic? Is it calm? I mean, I just I can't really imagine what a crush of so many diplomats just descending on New York would be like. Yeah, well, for one, you can't get a cab because everything's blocked off.

7:18The roads are blocked off. And particularly when the president is in town, it's just impossible. So you have to wear comfortable shoes. You have to walk a lot.

7:29Michele Kelemen:There's tons of stuff going on. So there's, you know, Security Council meetings. There's, you know, events off campus. The Iranians usually have some private meetings with think tank people or with journalists. You know, it's so there's just so much to cover. And you're just running around a lot in between. I mean, people joke about that the diplomats call it like speed dating. But for reporters, it's like you're trying to run into people anywhere you can. Yeah, I was wondering, like, where are where do you do the best interviews? There's all kinds of little spots around the U.N. where people are are coming and going.

8:07Michele Kelemen:And it's often those kind of hallway discussions, interviews that I can grab people in. And it's hard to kind of line things up ahead of time because you also don't know who's going to steal the show, who's going to come in. Like this year, you're going to have a speech by Delce Rodriguez, who's the interim leader of Venezuela after the U.S. ousted Nicolas Maduro earlier this year. So, you know, who's she going to be meeting with? What's her message going to be? So there could be a lot of interesting stuff going on, but a lot of it is just last minute and dependent on the news. Yeah, you're reacting in real time and then trying to make a plan and find who you can to talk about it.

8:52Yep, yep. This year, it's a bit fewer people coming. It feels a little bit less at the center of things, you know? I mean, you have these huge issues raging. Russia's war against Ukraine in its fifth year.

9:08Michele Kelemen:You have the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. You have the Strait of Hormuz issue. You have all these big issues, but it's, again, permanent Security Council members, U.S. and Russia, who are waging these wars. And so it makes it very difficult for the U.N. Security Council to kind of do anything. And it feels like, I don't know, you know, the U.N. secretary general is kind of really struggling to bring about any meaningful diplomacy on these really big issues. Yeah, it's interesting because you're kind of seeing in real time an evolving relevance, perhaps, of the U.N. Yeah, I mean, it does feel less relevant now, especially because the Trump administration also doesn't see multilateral diplomacy in the way that previous administrations have.

10:03Michele Kelemen:You know, President Trump created this board of peace to deal with Gaza instead of working through the U.N. Security Council or working through the U.N. It just feels like until the U.S. at least comes back and really realizes that this is a place that can get things done, it feels a little bit off topic, let's say. That was NPR Diplomacy correspondent Michelle Kellerman. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. This episode was produced by Gabriel Sanchez. It was edited by Adam Rainey and Vincent Nee. Our director is Jason Fuller. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney.

10:53It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Alyssa Nadwarni. If the creation of the universe was translated into music, what would it sound like?

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