Updated September 26, 2025 at 1:39 PM EDT
When President Trump arrived at the United Nations this week to address the General Assembly, his entrance didn't go as planned.
A video widely shared on social media shows Trump and first lady Melania Trump stepping onto an escalator that suddenly stops working. After a pause, Trump looked around as the first lady began walking up the steps.
"All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle," Trump joked later in his speech, adding that if the first lady weren't in such good shape, she would have fallen. He later said it was "sabotage."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X: "If someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately."
Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, said a White House videographer may have triggered a safety feature on the comb step at the top of the escalator.
"The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing," Dujarric said. A technician reset the escalator after the American delegation reached the second floor, he added.
For two escalator experts that Morning Edition spoke to, the takeaway is simple: If the U.N. explanation is correct, the machinery did what it was designed to do.
How escalators are designed
Escalators are moving staircases powered by chains and gears. Like elevators, they undergo regular inspections and are built with emergency features to shut down when something goes wrong.
Robert Rauch, a Florida-based elevator inspector with more than three decades of experience, said: "An escalator should not break down, as long as it's being maintained properly. But however, there are many safety micro switches in the entire unit that would stop the escalator in certain circumstances, and that's how they are designed. That's what they're there for. They're there for safety reasons."
Those switches can be triggered by obstructions, heavy loads, or shoes getting caught in the comb plate. "They could get caught in a comb tooth, and for safety reasons, there's micro switches that will stop the escalator, just for that reason. So somebody doesn't get injured or has a foot cut," Rauch said.
Safety features may have led to the stoppage at the U.N.
Richelle McCaskill-Diaz, who has worked on elevators and escalators for about 30 years, said the stoppage showed the system may have worked as intended.
"An escalator that's well maintained should not expect breakdowns," McCaskill-Diaz said. "All the safety features that would shut off an escalator usually are [there] to prevent a disaster from happening."
She said escalators have have what is called a comb impact switch that is meant to stop an escalator and prevent it from moving forward if something is stuck in it.
"If, in fact, somebody had tripped or had actuated the comb impact switch and it stopped, it did exactly as it was intended to do," she said.
Rauch agreed that if something triggered the upper comb impact switch, it could indeed shut off the escalator.
He added that, from seeing the video, "it did not look like a very hard stop at all."
But Rauch noted he understands why a sudden stop would startle somebody on an escalator, especially if they were "not holding on to the handrail properly, or their weight was not balanced, perfectly."
The radio version of this story was edited by Adam Bearne and produced by Kaity Kline.
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