In the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s maiden speech before the United Nations General Assembly, there were whispers that we would see a new Trump. After weeks of being schooled by Chief of Staff John Kelly, the White House’s own Henry Higgins, our nativist president would renew America’s commitment to upholding the world order. With reports that the administration was also considering renewing the U.S.’s commitment to the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, it had the possibility to be a momentous event: A normalization of relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world, after months of upheaval.



It was not to be. Instead, Trump gave a dark and tempestuous speech in which he referred to Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. He labeled the Iran nuclear deal an “embarrassment” and strongly signaled that he planned to rip it up. In Trump’s spin on the Axis of Evil speech, the Iraq slot was given to Venezuela; while poorly cosplaying Ronald Reagan, he attempted to turn Venezuela into a cautionary tale: “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”



Trump was belligerent and bombastic, threatening to start or exacerbate a number of conflicts, while ranting about refugees and free trade. It was a speech clearly influenced by adviser Stephen Miller, who many presumed had been cowering in some corner of the White House ever since Steve Bannon’s ouster in August. When it comes to foreign policy, at least, the Bannon wing is still very much alive.



Most strikingly, the speech made stabs at a foreign policy vision. “As long as I hold this office,” Trump intoned, “I will defend America’s interests above all else. But in fulfilling our obligations to our own nations, we also realize that it’s in everyone’s interest to seek a future where all nations can be sovereign, prosperous, and secure.” This has been interpreted by some supporters and some detractors as a return to realpolitik, but in fact there’s no overarching principle, not even Trump’s notion of “sovereignty,” which explains the various, sometimes schizophrenic approaches to foreign problems outlined in the speech. Rather, Trump gave what could be called his Global Carnage speech, ranting about crises—“Major portions of the world are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell,” he said—while proposing policies that would only make those crises worse.







From the very beginning, it was clear that this was not going to be your typical U.N. speech from the president of the United States. The campaign version of Donald Trump showed up, rolling out a laundry list of dubious accomplishments since he took office:

