After being laughed at during his speech at the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump went on the offensive while chairing today’s United Nations Security Council meeting on the “nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” Although this was the official topic Trump himself set by banging the gavel, he went on to open the meeting by claiming “that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election and that he “has gotten to know and like” North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, with whom “many things are happening behind the scenes away from the media which nobody knows.”
This meeting was riddled with various degrees of confrontation. Trump directly attacked China, and Wang Yi, the State Councilor and Minister for Foreign Affairs of China, literally shrugged it off. Most of the other presidents only hinted at criticism, calling into question the very existence of nuclear weapons and why the most powerful countries continue to modernize their arsenal while calling for others to disarm. Trump said that the reason Iran should “never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon” is because of its “track record” of being “the world’s leading sponsor of terror” that “fuels conflicts across the region and far beyond.”
Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, stood out from the other heads of state due to his assault on the U.S., in which he pointed to the double standard in the decision to single out Iran in the discussion of denuclearization. Morales recollected the United Sates’ history of intervention, specifically how it overthrew Iran’s democratic government in favor of a dictatorship. If the UN is deciding who should have WMD based on a countries previous actions, then the United States should definitely be forced to disarm. This becomes even more apparent when considering how the United States is the only country in history to have used a nuclear weapon on other human beings.
During the press conference later on the same day, Trump tried to make the discussion about how China is a threat to the United States and its democracy. However, his defense of Brett Kavanaugh against numerous claims of sexual assault could not be ignored by reporters.
China did not respond to Trump’s accusation that it is attempting to meddle in the election. However, when asked how he can say that Xi Jinping, the president of China, is his friend when an attempt to meddle in an election is a significant threat that undermines the United States, Trump doubled down and replied that “maybe he is not anymore.”
