The Emperor at the UN: Lies, Spectacle, and the Crisis of Empire

The Emperor Shows His Face

The UN General Assembly is supposed to be a place where nations, rich and poor, stand on equal ground. On Tuesday, September 23rd, it looked more like a stage for an emperor. Trump walked in, chest out, and turned what should be a gathering of the world into his own throne room. He ranted for nearly an hour, boasting that he single-handedly ended wars, scoffing that the UN is good for nothing but “strongly worded letters,” and spitting fire at migrants, clean energy, and entire nations. At one point he even sneered at the hall, “Your countries are going to hell.” Strip away the theatrics and you see it plain: this is how empire talks when it no longer bothers to hide its contempt.

Trump’s method is simple. Inflate his own image until it crowds out reality—turn a minor trade deal into a world-historic triumph, a temporary dip in border crossings into “zero entries,” and a drone strike into “ending a war.” Reduce whole peoples into caricatures—migrants as criminals, allies as freeloaders, the UN as a clown show. Flip the truth upside down—call climate change a hoax while hurricanes tear through coastlines, call humanitarian aid a conspiracy while American bombs starve children, call unilateral threats “leadership” while actual diplomacy is mocked as weakness. Then flood the world with swagger, because repetition and arrogance often pass for authority in a system that thrives on spectacle. This isn’t foreign policy. It’s propaganda.

The first lie is the stage itself. Trump talks about sovereignty, but what he means is obedience to Washington. He talks about patriotism, but what he’s defending is the right of U.S. corporations to plunder oil fields and dictate tariffs. He brags about security, but his version of safety means cages at the border and bombs over Gaza. This speech was aimed both outward and inward—outward at the Global South to remind them who holds the whip, inward at workers in the U.S. to discipline them with fear of migrants, enemies abroad, and collapse if they dare to resist. That’s the shape of technofascism: a high-tech mask over the same old class war, dressed up in flags and applause lines.

Our job is not to just say “Trump lied.” Any hustler can lie. Our job is to show what those lies are designed to do and who benefits. When he boasts about ending wars, we’ll put that beside UN records showing the blood is still flowing. When he claims the border is sealed, we’ll stack his words against the U.S. government’s own numbers. When he calls green energy a scam, we’ll line it up against studies from international agencies and Global South countries already proving renewables are cheaper and saving lives. Each excavation will expose the bigger project: to keep workers exhausted, migrants demonized, and the planet shackled to fossil capital, all so the ruling class can keep cashing in.

That’s why Trump needed this performance on the world stage. He wants to sell the idea that the only future possible is one of walls, oil rigs, and fear. He wants to bury international law and solidarity under his spectacle of insults. But we don’t have to play along. We write from the other side—the rubble of Gaza, the overworked warehouses, the flooded coastlines, the migrant caravans that show the true cost of empire. This is where the story of the world is actually being written, not in the throne room of the UN. Part I lays down the map. What comes next is the excavation itself: line by line, lie by lie, we’ll strip the gold leaf off this emperor and show the iron fist beneath.

Boasting About Ghost Victories

Trump strutted into the UN claiming he had ended seven wars in seven months. Kosovo and Serbia, Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Iran—he rattled off names like trophies on a shelf, as if conflicts with decades of blood and grief could be wrapped up in a handshake and a photo-op. The UN, he sneered, did nothing, while he alone brought peace. But the rubble of Gaza still smolders. The war in Ukraine still eats the lives of thousands each week. The Congo is not at peace, and neither is the Sudan. His “victories” exist only in his mouth, not in the lives of the people still burying their dead.

Here the propaganda trick is naked. He takes the chaos of imperialism—wars often inflamed or armed by the United States—and repackages them as solved problems under his personal rule. He performs the role of peacemaker, while celebrating the use of American bombers to “obliterate” Iran’s facilities, a boast that alone would violate international law. He has the gall to claim credit for peace while sharpening new knives for war. This is how empire launders its violence: rebrand aggression as diplomacy, dress bombing campaigns in the language of humanitarianism, and expect the world to applaud.

The UN, flawed as it is, has been the one arena where the wars he brags about “ending” are actually documented. UN OCHA’s daily reports show the horror still unfolding in Gaza. The Security Council’s records show debates over Ukraine and the failure to reach peace. These are the receipts, and they tell us something deeper than Trump’s bluster. They remind us that the U.S. does not want a world governed by collective decisions or law; it wants a world where a single man in Washington can claim to end wars like a real estate mogul closing deals. The arrogance is staggering, but the purpose is clear: to sell Americans the fantasy of imperial omnipotence while the rest of the world pays the price in blood.

If we take him at his word, Trump is not simply a president boasting. He is a man announcing himself as emperor, a ruler whose authority stretches from Gaza’s skies to Ukraine’s battlefields. And like every emperor before him, he depends on lies to cover the smell of burning cities. Our task is to strip away those lies, to hold up the official records, the UN resolutions, the testimony of the displaced and the dead, and say: here are the wars he says he ended. Here are the wars still raging. And here is the system—technofascism at home, hyper-imperialism abroad—that requires the emperor to lie with such force in the first place.

Turning Migrants into Monsters

Trump bellowed to the General Assembly that the United States has achieved “zero illegal aliens entering for four months straight,” and that under Biden “25 million people invaded” the country. He claimed the United Nations itself paid to fund the invasion—cash, food, transport, even debit cards—so migrants could “infiltrate” U.S. borders. Then, with the cruel smirk of a boss who knows the crowd can’t answer back, he warned Europe that their prisons were filling with asylum seekers, and declared flatly: “Your countries are going to hell.” This was not policy—it was scapegoating theater, a performance meant to turn human beings fleeing war and hunger into phantoms of terror.

The record tells a different story. U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s own monthly reports show encounters in the hundreds of thousands—never zero. The United Nations agencies he named, the IOM and UNHCR, do not bankroll border crossers. They provide basic humanitarian assistance: a stipend for rent, food parcels, bus fare to reunite families, winter clothing. That is not invasion; that is survival. And the caravans Trump turned into a horror story are, in fact, a human mirror: people uprooted by wars, coups, sanctions, and climate shocks—the very forces in which the United States has had a bloody hand.

The propaganda move here is as old as empire itself. First, inflate the threat: turn migration into an “invasion” of millions. Second, invent a villain: the UN supposedly paying people to storm borders. Third, erase history: omit U.S. policies that wrecked economies and fueled displacement across Central America, Africa, and the Middle East. Fourth, channel fear: tell workers in the North that their jobs, wages, and safety are threatened not by the bosses who exploit them, but by the desperate at the gates. It is the oldest trick in the ruling-class playbook—divide the exploited against one another.

But the truth is stubborn. Migrants are not the monsters Trump conjures up; they are the living testimony of empire’s devastation. Their presence at the border is proof of wars that never ended, economies looted by neoliberal diktat, and climate chaos brought on by fossil capital. If they are “invading” anything, it is the myth that the imperial core can forever insulate itself from the disasters it inflicts on others. That is why Trump rages at them so viciously—because their footsteps at the border are a verdict on the system he serves.

The Great Green Hoax—According to the Emperor

In his tirade, Trump thundered that renewable energy is a “scam,” that windmills are “pathetic,” that going green means going bankrupt. He went so far as to claim that Europe is suffering 175,000 heat deaths each year because electricity prices make air conditioning unaffordable. He mocked climate science as a con dreamed up by “stupid people,” sneered at the Paris Agreement as a trillion-dollar shakedown of America, and congratulated himself for reviving coal and oil as “clean, beautiful energy.” With a straight face, he presented fossil capital as salvation and climate action as suicide.

The facts tear this fantasy to shreds. The International Renewable Energy Agency—no leftist pamphlet, but an intergovernmental body of 168 nations—shows that 91 percent of all new renewable capacity added in 2024 was cheaper than the cheapest new fossil fuel option, with solar costs at just $0.043 per kilowatt-hour. The Nature Medicine study on European heat deaths places the number around 61,700 in the record summer of 2022—not 175,000, and not due to renewables, but to a climate crisis accelerated by fossil fuels Trump champions. And Germany, which he claimed “went back to nuclear,” in fact shuttered its last reactors in April 2023, completing its nuclear phase-out. The record is clear: renewables are cheaper, cleaner, and scaling, while fossil fuels are killing the planet.

The propaganda function here is textbook. Trump flips reality upside down: he calls the most cost-effective and sustainable energy sources a “con,” while painting the dirtiest, most destructive fuels as the path to prosperity. He cherry-picks half-truths—yes, energy prices are high in parts of Europe—but erases the cause: profiteering by fossil giants and dependence on imported gas, not windmills on the horizon. He invokes compassion for the poor who “can’t turn on an air conditioner,” but his policies guarantee that millions in the Global South will never escape heat waves, floods, and famines made worse by burning more oil and coal.

What he calls a scam is actually a threat—to Exxon, Chevron, and the coal barons who bankroll the empire. To admit that renewables work, and that climate change is real, would mean acknowledging that their business model is killing the planet. That is why Trump wages ideological war on wind turbines: they are not just spinning blades; they are symbols that another world is possible, one where energy is not chained to fossil oligarchs. His speech was not a defense of workers struggling with bills; it was a defense of the capitalist class that profits from climate chaos. The emperor’s rage at renewables is nothing more than a love letter to the oil wells.

Tariffs as Tribute, Allies as Vassals

Trump stood before the world and declared that Europe must mirror U.S. tariffs against Russia or face humiliation. He bragged that NATO countries had jumped from 2 percent to 5 percent defense spending at his demand. He ridiculed Brazil, announcing that it was “doing poorly and will continue to do poorly” unless it bent closer to Washington. These are not the words of diplomacy; they are the words of a feudal lord addressing vassals. Tariffs become tribute, allies become subordinates, and sovereign nations are spoken of as wayward colonies in need of correction.

The record, once again, says otherwise. NATO’s June 2025 summit at The Hague did not deliver a sudden leap to 5 percent of GDP; it set a gradual pathway toward that figure by 2035. Brazil, far from collapsing, recorded its highest GDP ever in mid-2025, with 2.5 percent growth in the first half of the year, confirmed by Brazil’s own statistical institute. What Trump presented as weakness abroad was in fact vitality, and what he claimed as his personal victory was a distortion of collective decisions. The emperor takes credit for the sun rising and mocks nations for surviving despite his threats.

The propaganda mechanism here is coercive theater. Trump performs strength by issuing ultimatums: join U.S. tariffs or be ashamed, hike military spending or be exposed, obey Washington or face economic doom. In doing so he recasts imperial bullying as leadership, dressing up domination as “patriotism.” He thrives on the spectacle of humiliation—telling Brazil it will fail, telling Europe it is embarrassing itself—because the performance of hierarchy is itself the message. Empire rules not only by bombs and banks but by ridicule, by the normalization of subordination.

What Trump revealed is the true architecture of his so-called “patriotism”: a global protection racket. Allies pay up in tariffs and arms purchases; enemies are threatened with sanctions and isolation. The United States is no longer even pretending to be a partner; it is a metropole demanding tribute. This is Empire’s external face: hyper-imperialism dressed as common sense, coercion marketed as patriotism. In the emperor’s mouth, even the language of sovereignty becomes a joke—for everyone else’s sovereignty must kneel before his.

The UN as Punching Bag

Trump sneered at the United Nations, reducing it to a caricature: a building with a broken escalator, a teleprompter that failed, and a bureaucracy that does nothing but issue “strongly worded letters.” In his telling, the UN stood idle while he personally ended seven wars, brokered ceasefires, and brought peace where no one else dared. The insult is deliberate—an emperor mocking the very institution meant to constrain imperial hubris. By reducing multilateralism to malfunctioning machinery, Trump sought to make the world believe only unilateral U.S. power can deliver results.

Yet the record is unambiguous. The UN General Assembly convened emergency sessions in September 2025 to debate ceasefire resolutions on Gaza and Ukraine, with overwhelming majorities calling for negotiations and humanitarian corridors. The Security Council, despite U.S. vetoes, tabled multiple draft resolutions on Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has mobilized thousands of staff to deliver food, water, and medical supplies across Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine—at the very moment Trump dismissed the institution as useless, a fact underscored by UN press briefings on Gaza operations. UN agencies from UNICEF to the World Food Programme and OCHA’s Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 have been central lifelines in conflicts he claimed to have solved single-handedly.

The propaganda function is transparent. By mocking the UN as feeble, Trump justifies bypassing it, normalizing unilateral U.S. action as the only serious form of diplomacy. He rebrands empire’s contempt for law and multilateral institutions as “patriotism,” when in reality it is nothing more than the arrogance of a state that wants no check on its violence. If the UN is made to look like a clown show, then U.S. wars and sanctions appear as the only tools left on the table. This is how imperialism manufactures its legitimacy—not through truth, but through derision, spectacle, and lies.

Trump’s punchline about escalators and teleprompters wasn’t comedy—it was political theater. It was the emperor reminding the world that the United Nations cannot stop him, that its chambers are merely stages for his monologues. To dismantle the UN rhetorically is to clear the ground for a politics where Washington alone writes the script of world order. And that, comrades, is not patriotism—it is naked technofascism cloaked in sarcasm, an empire laughing at the very idea of accountability.

The Emperor’s Nakedness – What the Speech Really Reveals

Strip away the boasts, and what remains is not leadership but domination. Trump did not negotiate with the world; he dictated to it. He told Europe to cut off Russian oil or be “embarrassed.” He told Brazil it would “continue to do poorly” unless it followed Washington’s script. He told NATO to spend more, not as a matter of collective defense but as tribute to the empire. This is not diplomacy—it is the theater of a mafia boss, dressed in the robes of patriotism, performing sovereignty as coercion.

In Trump’s mouth, patriotism becomes a license for imperial domination. “America is governed by Americans” sounds like an affirmation of self-rule, but in practice it means every other nation is to be governed by Washington’s whims. Sovereignty is redefined not as mutual respect but as obedience to U.S. dictates. His rhetoric flips the meaning of independence: to be sovereign is to comply with empire, to be unsovereign is to resist. What he calls patriotism is in truth the demand that all nations bend to America’s rule.

The lies reveal not confidence but fragility. No strong empire needs to shout “I ended seven wars” when wars rage on in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, and beyond. No secure power needs to brag of trillions in investments while inequality, debt, and collapse haunt its own working class. Trump’s endless boasts are not proof of strength but signs of weakness—the rant of a ruler who knows that the empire’s legitimacy is fraying and must be propped up by spectacle. The louder he bellows, the more naked the emperor becomes.

What the world saw in New York was not the restoration of U.S. primacy but its crisis. An empire so desperate to maintain control that it ridicules the United Nations, bullies allies, slanders the Global South, and manufactures victories out of fantasies. Trump revealed the essence of hyper-imperialism: the fusion of nationalism at home with domination abroad, stitched together by propaganda. He came to the UN to display power; what he revealed instead was the insecurity of a system in decline, a crumbling empire shouting at the world to kneel.

Weaponizing Truth Against Empire

Trump’s speech at the United Nations was not a message of peace, nor even of diplomacy. It was a performance of empire: an emperor pounding his chest, hurling insults, rewriting history, and demanding submission. He boasted of ending wars that continue to rage, of victories that exist only in his imagination, of sovereignty that means nothing beyond the barrel of U.S. power. He transformed the General Assembly—the one space meant to represent the peoples of the world—into his personal stage for bullying and deception.

But lies leave traces, and propaganda exposes its own weaknesses. In mocking the UN as useless, Trump confirmed that U.S. imperialism cannot coexist with multilateralism. In threatening tariffs and dictating terms, he showed that so-called “free trade” is nothing more than tribute extracted from allies. In declaring that migration and green energy are “destroying the free world,” he revealed the desperation of an empire incapable of solving its own crises, blaming the Global South and the poor for problems created by capital itself. The louder his voice, the more clearly we see the cracks in the imperial edifice.

To excavate propaganda is to strip away the emperor’s robes and show the machinery of domination underneath. Trump’s rhetoric of patriotism is nothing more than the ideology of technofascism—rule by capital, by coercion, by surveillance, by the fusion of state and corporate power. His attack on migrants, his hatred of renewable energy, his scorn for the UN, his arrogance toward the Global South: these are not separate threads but one fabric. They reveal a system at war with humanity itself, a system that requires endless lies to sustain its fading legitimacy.

Our task is not to merely expose Trump as a fraud—though he is—but to expose the empire that produces him, the empire that needs clowns in crowns to sell its violence as patriotism. Against his propaganda we must weaponize truth, history, and solidarity. We must show that it is not migrants who ruin nations but imperial plunder; not renewable energy that bankrupts economies but fossil capital; not the UN that fails humanity but the vetoes and wars of the United States. The emperor is naked, but he is still dangerous. To bring him down, we need more than laughter—we need organization, struggle, and the internationalism of the oppressed.