NEW YORK — President Trump lent his campaign slogan to the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, telling reporters outside his inaugural U.N. meeting that he would soon “make the United Nations great.”
“The United Nations has tremendous potential and we’ll see how it works out,” Trump said after hosting a gathering of more than 100 countries aimed at discussing U.N. reform. “I think the main message is ‘make the United Nations great.’ Not again, ‘make the United Nations great.’ Such tremendous potential, and I think we’ll be able to do this.”
Trump’s U.N. reform meeting focused on the need to trim the organization’s massive bureaucracy and distribute the burden of funding U.N. programs more equitably among member states in order to lessen the load on the U.S., which is the body’s largest contributor.
“The meeting was very good. I met a lot of the people that I have been dealing with over the last nine months,” Trump said of his U.N. reform summit.
Trump’s focus on streamlining the U.N.’s operations has aligned him with its leader, Secretary General Antonion Guterres, who also prioritizes reining in some of the U.N.’s more sprawling programs and reallocating resources into areas that produce results.
The president will address the U.N. General Assembly for the first time on Tuesday in a highly anticipated speech.
