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Sarah Longwell
Hello, everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of work. And I am joined today by boy wonder Andrew Egger. He watched Donald Trump's UN speech, of which I have only seen a couple of clips. And so he is going to walk us through what was another barn burner, insane 25th amendment time kind of thing from Trump. And he's going to show us all some of the highlights and we're going to talk about them. So, Andrew, take it away.
Andrew Egger
Yeah, so I don't know if you remember, Sarah, very early in Trump's first term, there was like a specific moment where he goes, goes to the United nations and he's given his normal kind of like super braggadocious barn burner, like, I'm doing great, the country's so back under me speech. And there are a couple moments when like the assembled other.
Sarah Longwell
They laugh at him.
Andrew Egger
They laugh at him.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
Andrew Egger
And he like, he's kind of taken aback by that. And he like, makes a joke, but he's like, plainly not expecting it.
Donald Trump
My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. America's so true. Didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay.
Andrew Egger
And that just kept going through my head over and over again as I was watching this speech. Because we're in a very different place now, right? Like before in the first Trump term, everyone around the world was kind of like, huh, this is sort of weird, you know, like, what's up? What's going on over there in America? They got some problems they need to sort out. They just elected this goofball president. But like, all the normal, like, processes and things were kind of still in place. The institutions were still holding up. And now we're, you know, eight months into this guy's second term, he has blown up like half of the, the institutions that like kind of unite us with the world in a lot of ways. He's been Crazy on NATO, he's been like insane on global trade. You know, he's, he's just been, been taking a sledgehammer to all of this stuff and, and nobody's laughing. You know, it's like, wow, we have a real problem on our hands and we have to either butter this guy up or else just sort of sit on our hands all through this so we can talk about it. I don't know, where should we start? Like, he took a long time to get around to any of his, like actual policy points that he wanted to make. And the reason for that was because he had some just sort of UN related gripes that he wanted to get off of his chest. One of them very early on was, was that he brought up this moment when, when supposedly years and years ago, he had bid as a real estate developer on a contract to rebuild the UN complex. Maybe we can watch that.
Donald Trump
Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United nations complex. I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, I'm going to give you marble floors, they're going to give you terrazzo, I'm going to give you the best of everything. You're going to have mahogany walls, they're going to give you plastic. But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time and which actually produced a far inferior product.
Andrew Egger
None of this shit matters, right? I mean, like, none of this is, this is a random bee in Donald Trump's bonnet that he has from years. And it's like his first inclination that the UN was trouble was when they didn't let him do the building. And he also went from there into another kind of segue. And other times, the UN has sort of been rude to him personally. He talks about how he ended all these wars. He didn't get a phone call from the un.
Donald Trump
I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United nations offering to help in finalizing the deal. All I got from the United nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen. But she's in great shape. We're both in good shape. We both stood and then a teleprompter that didn't work.
Andrew Egger
So I did say before nobody was laughing at him. There were a few instances where the actual comedy kind of came through it and it was more of like a laughing with Donald Trump sort of situation. Ah, good one, sir. Sort of move.
Sarah Longwell
I'm sorry, is the escalate. The escalator must be broken. He seems very obsessed with the escalator there. Did they have to walk?
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I think that there was a moment like that was just today. Yeah, the escalator actually kind of like gave out underneath him, which was, you know, you hate to see it, but sort of moment. Here we go. Donald Trump on escalators, man, I don't know what to tell you.
Sarah Longwell
It stopped like as soon as he got there. That feels like someone was pranking him.
Andrew Egger
Look, it wouldn't have happened, it wouldn't have happened if Donald Trump had gotten the contract to redo the UN and had put in quality made in the USA escalators there. That's what I think anyway. All of that to say just like it's Trump's show, he knows it's his show, he knows he has all these leaders completely, you know, buy the balls and they are gonna just kind of get, let him do what he wants, lest he sort of put him, put his country and their country in these sort of like mutual suicide pacts economically and all this stuff. And it's just crazy. It's just crazy to watch, you know, for all kinds of reasons. I don't know what should we go on to policy stuff or what are you making of all this so far, Sarah?
Sarah Longwell
Well, I got a couple of, I think slightly petty, non substance related comments to make, which is he looks awful, you know, every time I see him. And you get him in different modes. This is, this is where he and Biden were so different. You didn't see Biden much. You know, they did sort of hide him, whereas Trump, you see a lot. But sometimes you see him and he looks okay. I don't know, he's golfing, but other times, especially when he's giving speeches more and more he sounds marble mouthed. The makeup is so over the top, like it's always been insane. But he's got his little, like he is in peak Oompa Loompa orange in these. His hair looks pretty weird, but he's up there kind of slurring like when he's just saying marble before. He's got this very low energy kind of plodding way that he's talking. He sounds sleepy, like, like, you know, you just think about all the Times he called Joe Biden sleepy. Joe Biden. Like, that is how Trump sounds kind of sleepy. But he is kicking off jokes. You do hear people laughing with him. And I guess it's like. Like he's like a toddler with a machine gun. It's like people are like, just keep him calm, maybe give him some candy. Nobody make any sudden moves. Whereas probably in the first term, they thought, well, we can still appeal to people in the American government. Like, there's adults there we can talk to. But now it's like, no, it's this guy. So I guess we're just along for this ride. But it is amazing how Trump fixates on grievances. It reminded me, actually, he gave another talk recently. I think it was. He was dedicated something. He was somewhere. But he started talking about the grass.
Donald Trump
So I'm very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world.
Sarah Longwell
Right. Like, it is weird. And old people do this where they lapse into a, like, expertise from when they were younger, in their heydays, and they start talking about them. And he does that, right? He was talking about how the parks were gonna have better grass, and he started talking about how he knows a lot about grass and this kind of grass is better than that kind of grass. And that's how it sounded when he was talking about the marble. Like a guy who once upon a time was very invested in whether you had marble or zabba dabba doobly.
Andrew Egger
I've never heard of that before either. I'm a real estate developer.
Sarah Longwell
Do you think they have plastic walls at the un? Do you think they're plastic?
Andrew Egger
The one behind him is a very interesting green stone that I was totally agreeing with you did not set off his complexion well at all. That's the only wall I know about at the U.N. yeah, it doesn't look plastic to me. The toddler with a machine gun thing, I don't think. Have you ever seen there's like, an old episode of the Twilight Zone that's about like a nine year old with, like, omnipotent divine powers. And he's just, like, very petulant and like, he throws tantrums and everybody's incredibly freaked out to be around him all the time. I had not made the connection until you mentioned it, but that is, like, exactly the behavior of, like, all of these foreign leaders around Donald Trump right now. Just like, kind of this frozen, like, don't make any sudden moves. Don't raise your voice too much. Like, don't just like, you know, smile and wave and clap and just do all the things and we'll, we'll make.
Sarah Longwell
It'll be over soon.
Andrew Egger
You know, it's crazy. I mean, it's crazy. And you mentioned Biden. I mean, there was a lot of that too. Like the whole first half of the speech or not first half, but the whole introduction of the speech was also very much larded up with just sort of domestic, you know, Joe Biden ruined everything. Aren't you all glad you have me back? Sort of content, right? There were a couple moments later on that stood out. I mean, like the kind of thesis statement of the whole speech was, we don't need to play this clip, but I'll just read it. I'm really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell. He's like, everybody else around the world, everything else is falling apart. Only the USA is hot. The USA is the hottest country. You know, that kind of stuff. But, but he, he really did like, make kind of a pitch for, like, everybody should be emulating our example when it comes to things like mass migration, when it comes to things like, you know, controlling the flow of drugs, when it comes to things like energy, you know, strategy. He. He like had this weird thing where he like really laid into Europe for like continuing to build out green energy. As though like, that is like an affront to him, right? Not, not just that it's like, you know, more expensive or like difficult in there for them to like, not just that they're like leaving money on the table, right, by like itemizing into, into wind power or whatever, but like actually that it's like a, like an affront to like, international values to move away from fossil fuels and things like that. I don't know if we have any clips about that. We got any clips about that.
Donald Trump
We could play climate change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, this climate change, it's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong, were they? They were made by stupid people that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I'm really good at predicting things. You know, they actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best selling hat. Trump was right about everything. And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. And I'm telling you that if you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.
Sarah Longwell
So intense, like he doesn't even make an argument about like, you know, decline of gdp. You're just going to fail. And also I'm not sure that all of the scientists around the globe are wrong that the globe is getting warmer. Has that been completely debunked? I miss that study. Yeah.
Andrew Egger
I mean, here's the thing, like, look, I think we've all gotten a little less conservative maybe on some things over the years watching all of this stuff happen. But like this one, going back a ways, I've always sort of struggled to get my brain around it other than just sort of as like a pure sort of fu to the left. And like the fact that fossil fuel companies used to invest very heavily, maybe they still do, I don't know, in like counter messaging and right wing, you know, different think tanks and things like that. But like the global warming stuff is pretty simple, right? It's like more of these greenhouse gases trap more of the heat here. So the number on the temperature on the, on the thermometer goes up and that's what happening. And you can see it happening, you can watch it happen. You know, like here, over here, it just gets a little hotter and like that's one half of it and the other half of it is just like there's only so much, there's only so much liquefied dinosaurs in the ground. You know, we can't do it forever. We've been doing it for like 100 years and we're already kind of, kind of running dry, right? And so it's just like at some point there's going to be some kind of transition away from boss feels. Maybe it's been done badly, maybe it's been done too quickly. But like the idea that, you know, again, like, like to view green energy as a threat to our way of life and to do that on the international stage and to pair it with the, the Trump is always wrong about or Trump is always right about everything, like kind of, but, but not in a braggadocious way. I mean it's just, he's just feeling himself up there, right? It's, it's, it's really something to see.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess America's back. I guess this is when. When, you know, it's funny, in focus groups, people do talk about a lot about. In the first term, people talked a lot about Trump embarrassing them on the world stage. And I, I feel like that is one of the things that we've become desensitized to, because I think if you took us back, you and I, and you put us in 2017, and he gave this speech, and not just you and I, but like our country, we would be horrified. We would be like on the floor being like, can you believe he's saying these things in front of world leaders? Behaving like that, looking like that, talking like that. And now we're like, is it Monday? I don't know. Like, this is what the guy does. Is it Tuesday? This is just how he sounds. But we shouldn't stop being sort of shocked by how insane he sounds, because he does sound insane.
Andrew Egger
Okay. Yeah. So let's go from the. The green. The green new scam stuff is crazy for the reasons we've talked about, but it is not necessarily, like, I don't know, immediately horrifying. The stuff that he was saying about specifically mass migration, but also specifically drug enforcement was crazy. So let's make you.
Sarah Longwell
That's just like, let's, let's just like we're committing war crimes and you should, too.
Andrew Egger
Yes, 100%. That's what it was. Let's listen to that.
Donald Trump
Let's put it this way. People don't like taking big loads of drugs in boats anymore. There aren't too many boats that are traveling on the seas by Venezuela. They tend not to want to travel very quickly anymore. And we virtually stopped drugs coming into our country by sea. We call them the water drugs. They kill hundreds of thousands of people. I've also designated multiple savage drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, along with two bloodthirsty transnational gangs, probably the worst gangs anywhere in the world. Ms. 13 and Trend Aragua. Trend Aragua is from Venezuela, by the way. Such organizations torture, maim, mutilate and murder with impunity. They're the enemies of all humanity. And for this reason, we've recently begun using the supreme power of the United States military supreme to destroy Venezuelan terrorists and trafficking networks led by Nicholas Maduro. To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence. That's what we're doing. We have no choice.
Andrew Egger
We call them water drugs.
Sarah Longwell
Sarah, is.
Andrew Egger
Isn't it crazy how, like, even when he's saying the most, like, psychotic, unhinged, like, vile stuff. It's like he still has these weird little, like, brain worms. Like we call them the water drugs. I don't know. It's all.
Sarah Longwell
I've never, literally never heard a single person ever call them water drugs. Doesn't even actually make that much sense. I will say, you know, here's the thing. The problem with Trump is the way that he sort of mishmashes everything together. Like, it is true. These murderous Venezuelan gangs are very bad, and they are. They do torture people. They are criminals, and we don't want them in our country, and we do want to prosecute them. That being said, he's specifically tying that to the recent actions we have taken, which blowing up boats that there is absolute, currently no consensus was the right thing to do or was legal, was within our authority, that they were like some reports that the boats were turning around to get like. So when he says we have the supreme Power, it sounds like what he is saying is we don't have to follow any international laws. That's what I heard.
Andrew Egger
Or even really, like. I mean, like, the thing about this particular. These particular actions is, first of all, they didn't, like, announce this as a policy, right? They just blew up a boat. And after they blew up that boat, there was reporting like, the Pentagon was sort of scrambling to try to find a US Statutory justification for doing that. Like, not just international law, but our laws. And meanwhile, the constant line from the administration, and it's what you heard from the President just now, is we just have the authority to do this. We're not pointing at any particular, you know, statute that gives us, you know, the. The ability to do this under certain circumstances. We're just saying those guys are drug smugglers, those guys are terrorists, and so we are allowed to blow them up. Right? And it's like what you were just saying. It's this mishmash. It's this. It's the way that Trump, like, gives you sort of like this seductive pitch that, like, these problems that are maybe more complicated than. Than that maybe like, okay, yeah, there's all these, like, people who are smuggler. There are way too many drugs being smuggled into our country. How do we deal with that? Like, what's the correct way to approach that situation? Oh, it's easy. You just. You just kill everybody involved, right? If a person shows up with drugs, you liquefy them, you vaporize them, you know, you hit them with a cruise missile, problem solved, right? I mean, and this is sort of like the, the model that certain like Central European despots in, wannabe despots have taken like in their, in their own sort of anti drug trade in, in, in recent years. And it's just, it's just, it's one thing to see it happen once and then it's another thing to like see the mass outcry, to see the fact that they, they have not like been able to conjure up yet any kind of like justification for where in law they are permitted to do this, still have not. And then to see it happen again in the wake of that, when it happened again a few days ago was wild. And now to see them like take to this very. With the eyes of the entire world on him and continuing to not make any legal argument, but just to say supreme authority, we're allowed to deal with it losers is kind of the idea. And that's just, I mean it's a remarkable place for like the United States of America, the nation of laws, you know, like USA Constitution. This is where we are as far as at least this particular policy is concerned. It's really something.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. They didn't seem shocked by it in the room though. They all looked. I mean, I don't know, they all have their, you know, things in that do the translations, but I guess I'd maybe, I wish I was seeing maybe some more shocked faces. But everybody I guess was like, lunatic's gonna lunatic. So. Okay, what else you got?
Andrew Egger
I don't know, do we have anything else? Those are kind of the ones that stood out to me. Maybe there was one more about some of the human trafficking stuff.
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, let's watch those.
Donald Trump
They lost more than 300,000 children, little children who were trafficked into the United States on the Biden watch, many of whom have been raped, exploited and abused and sold. Sold. Nobody talks about that. The fake news doesn't write about it. With many others, young children who are missing or dead. And we found a lot of these children and we're sending them back, and we've been sending them back to their parents. They said nobody knows who they are. They said, where do you come from? And they'll give us a country and we'll find out and we'll figure it out and we'll bring them back to their homes. And the mother and father rush to the door and there are tears in their eyes. They can't believe that they're seeing their son or daughter, their little son or daughter again. We've done almost 30,000 of them so far. Any system that results in the mass trafficking of children is inherently evil. Yet that is exactly what the globalist migration agenda has done. And it's what it's all about in America. Those days, as you know, are over. The Trump administration is working and we are continuing to work to track down the villains that are causing this problem. And also, as I said, to get back the 30,000 we've already returned now I think we're going to have another. We're going to find a lot. You're not going to find all of them. 300. More than 300,000.
Andrew Egger
Can I unpack this just a little bit? Because it's important to get some specifics here. He's basically making this case, and this is just one small part of this sort of broader case that he's making at the UN where he's talking about how basically the primary civilizational challenge of the moment is for the west to do a better job closing its borders against sort of like these waves of migration coming out of war torn areas in Africa and in south and Central America. And that's the basic pitch is like, you all have not been policing your borders, neither have we. We have stopped, started to, and you guys all need to start to as well. But this particular case he's making is a case that the administration has made a lot. When they want to sound like a more humanitarian note, which is talking about sort of unaccompanied minors who have shown up in America. Talking about this specific, like, the numbers he's tossing around are, you know, it's not true. The fake news doesn't talk about them. The fake news has discussed that they are sort of invented. They're kind of like a statistical sort of like quirk, like of, of, you know, certain children who were like processed into the country and like, for, for one reason or another, like the DHS doesn't have specific tabs on where they are right now. That does not necessarily imply that they have been like trafficked into some sort of like, horrible situation, right? It doesn't. Maybe they've just. They're just hanging out with a family member, right? I mean, it's like sort of like a we don't know, we don't know sort of thing about these kids, many of whom came here, you know, going to a relative because they wanted to. You know, like, that's the idea is like they were sent here to like get to a better life in some way. But, but this is sort of the conflation of things, right? Is like is. Is conflating the fact that like the, the human smuggling operation to get people into America that like these cartels have set up is frequently horrible. Like, nobody denies that it's awful and it shouldn't be happening. And to the extent that it has stopped happening, that is a good thing in a lot of ways. It is also then conflating though their broader sort of deportation and arrest program that's happening right now, which everyone knows is not being done in a sort of humanitarian way. They have been leaning into the fact that it's not been happening in a humanitarian way. They've been kind of like glorying in the sort of militarized cruelty of this program and like posting about it online and saying like, bye, bye, you don't get to be here anymore. Hahaha, you're being marched around in leg irons. But like, every once in a while they feel the need to make this opposite claim, right, about these children that they are repatriating and taking back home to their mothers and fathers who can't believe it. You know, they run to the door with tears in their eyes. This is all invented stuff. I mean, like, this has been run down. They've been trotting this out all summer talking about these sorts of things. It is not the case. I mean, it's just not the case. Like these, these are, these are families that wanted their kids to be able to go to the US Figured out how to get them there. I'm sure they're happy to see them, but like, it's not the case that like they were snatched off the street corner in Guatemala and brought up here, you know, to, to be sold into, into slavery and now like the Trump administration has rescued them from that, you know, and it's just like one tiny little thing in all of this. But like, he's making up stuff, he's lying. And they're, and they all know they're lying and it's, it's not great stuff.
Sarah Longwell
Well, I got two quick points on this. One is lying about human trafficking and conflating it like human trafficking is a real problem and one that is deeply scary and worrying and that we need to tackle. Conflating it, though, with deporting kids back whose parents set them here for good lives is actually like deeply pernicious and gross because it keeps us from being able to sort of understand like, what we are doing on actual human trafficking in its grotesque form versus us sending kids back whose parents were trying to get them into the United States to live better lives with a relative, like, and so conflating those is actually, it is gross and indecent. The second thing is that whole thing has some real OJ Vibes of like, I'm gonna go find the real killer. Because you know who's done, like right now, the goal that Donald Trump has to stand in front of the world and talk about human trafficking, talk about the traffick of minors, the raping of minors when his best friend was doing it, and they won't tell the country about it when it's one of the biggest scandals of his administration is like the chutzpah on that guy. And God, that he gets to live in a world where people don't call him on that garbage. Man, does that infuriate me when you.
Andrew Egger
Say, when you say like that he gets to live in that world. This is the last thing that struck me about this speech, and I don't even think we pulled a clip of it because I didn't think to until you mentioned that just now. But he made one kind of throw aside comment. Maybe we'll stick it in in post. Everybody says I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. He lists off a huge, huge, long list of his accomplishments and then he says, everybody says I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for any one of these things.
Donald Trump
Now, after ending all of these wars and also earlier negotiating the Abraham Accords, which is a very big thing for which our country received no credit, never receives credit, everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.
Andrew Egger
You talked at the beginning a little bit about like just the staggering kind of like braggadocio and bravado and just like insane puffed up ness of this guy, right? And that's the way he's been forever. But like, in the last year, he has created for himself this unbelievable new world where everybody he interacts with all the time inside his own administration, outside his administration, leaders on Capitol Hill, leaders in business in America, world leaders all over the place, from Europe to the Arab states to Vladimir Putin to Xi Jinping, like, everybody kisses his ass all day long, all the time, for whatever reason, often deciding they have decided that that's, that's in their best interest to do that. Right? For, again, for, for any number of reasons, whether they're like, ah, if I, if I do this, this guy will sign off on my own authoritarian plan in my own country. Or man, I guess the authoritarians are, are doing this. So we as the NATO countries have to do it too, to, you know, to, to, to keep up in the arms race or, or whatever. But like, like it's perpetual. It is happening to a guy who already thinks he is, like, the second coming of Christ in many respects, figuratively speaking. But, like, that's kind of. His vibe is like he's got this insane messiah complex and it has turned his brain into pudding. Like, it's. You can just see that like. Like he. He actually thinks that everybody thinks he should have, like, 15 Nobel Peace Prizes. Right? Like, he thinks that's true and it has an impact on the world as a.
Sarah Longwell
As a human on the planet. I would like to say I do not believe he deserves a Nobel priest prize. So it is objectively incorrect to say, everybody, I. This. This where. This is where, you know, remember when he. It was like, just a couple weeks ago, he got protested at Joe's Stone Crab by, like, four young girls. And they were like, we're gonna charge them with Rico. And I do think part of it was this astonishment on his part that somebody could show up at the restaurant and tell him, we think you're doing a crappy job. Because everybody around him. This is. It is sort of, you know, if people think that people weren't giving Joe Biden, like, the real polling and the real information, like the people around Donald Trump have constructed, like, a real playpen for this guy so that, yeah, he can live in his own alternative universe. And it's not good for him, and it's not good for us, and it's clearly not good for the world. Who, my guess is, is just trying to wait this guy out or thinking, hey, you know what? While America descends into a complete kleptocracy, why don't we do it too? Because nobody's watching anymore. The people who used to sort of try to impose the higher standards on the rest of us is actually bringing the message of, no, your standards. No, do it as crappy as we're doing it right now, and that'll give you a better country. Just total permission for global chaos and degradation. Great. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for bringing us all that information. Thanks to all of you for watching. Don't forget to hit subscribe to the feed. It really helps out. It helps people find us. We'll keep bringing you great content like this every day. Good luck, guys.
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Date: September 23, 2025
Host: Sarah Longwell
Guest: Andrew Egger
In this episode, Sarah Longwell and Andrew Egger discuss Donald Trump’s recent address to the United Nations, dissecting both the content and the global reaction. Egger, who watched the full speech, breaks down Trump’s performance, policy pronouncements, and the unnerving atmosphere in the assembly hall. The episode examines how Trump’s grievances, braggadocio, and disregard for global norms signal not just a spectacle but an international crisis of American leadership.
“He has blown up like half of the institutions that unite us with the world…nobody’s laughing. You know, it’s like, wow, we have a real problem on our hands.” — Andrew Egger [01:43]
“None of this shit matters.” — Andrew Egger [03:50]
“He looks awful…he sounds marble-mouthed…he is in peak Oompa Loompa orange…like a toddler with a machine gun. It’s like people are like, just keep him calm, maybe give him some candy. Nobody make any sudden moves.” — Sarah Longwell [06:09]
“Donald Trump on escalators, man, I don’t know what to tell you.” — Andrew Egger [05:21]
“Old people do this where they lapse into a, like, expertise from when they were younger.” — Sarah Longwell [08:05]
“It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion...If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things.” — Donald Trump [11:00]
“We have no choice... We will blow you out of existence.” — Donald Trump [15:05]
“They didn’t announce this as a policy, right? They just blew up a boat. And after they blew up that boat, the Pentagon was sort of scrambling to try to find a US statutory justification for doing that.” — Andrew Egger [17:41]
“They lost more than 300,000 children…Many of whom have been raped, exploited…And we found a lot of these children and we’re sending them back.” — Donald Trump [20:27]
“These are families that wanted their kids to be able to go to the US… It’s not the case that they were snatched off the street corner in Guatemala and brought up here to be sold into slavery and now the Trump administration has rescued them.” — Andrew Egger [21:59]
“Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.” — Donald Trump [27:00]
“In the last year, he has created for himself this unbelievable new world where everyone he interacts with…kisses his ass all day.” [27:18]
“People around Donald Trump have constructed, like, a real playpen for this guy so that…he can live in his own alternative universe.” [28:55]
Sarah Longwell and Andrew Egger deliver a brisk yet sobering analysis of Trump’s 2025 U.N. speech, painting a picture of a president increasingly detached from fact and accountability, presiding over a global order marked by fear, confusion, and lowering standards. The episode is a clarion call not to normalize behavior that, just a few years ago, would have caused international outrage, highlighting the dangers of unchecked grievance, authoritarian drift, and global permissiveness in the Trump era.