Though President Trump refused to travel to New York to attend the UN Assembly, he made sure his thoughts were heard by all. In his speech, Trump made sure to highlight the U.S’s contribution to addressing COVID through several clinical vaccine trials. He then proceeded to directly blame China for the virus, brought attention to China’s high pollution, and hinted at human rights violations in China. Trump then listed “superior outcomes” the U.S. accomplished during his administration. In his address, Trump only highlighted his “America First” foreign policy without addressing the theme for the event: “Reaffirming our (the UN’s) Collective Commitment to Multilateralism”.
Meanwhile, in his address, President Xi chose to speak mostly on COVID and seemed to dismiss President Trump’s blame on the “China virus” saying “Any attempt of politicizing the issue or stigmatization must be rejected.” Jinping addressed the UN with much more grace and even pledged aid in reference to COVID.
In this strange take on the blame game, Trump appears to use the UN assembly as a way to shift the blame of COVID onto China while reminding (convincing?) the world of what he believes he has achieved so far while in office. Meanwhile, he completely neglected to even approach addressing the theme of the assembly this year. It was surprisingly difficult to find articles analyzing or even addressing these two speeches and I wonder why that might be. Trump blatantly chooses to use his address as a bit of free coverage for his presidential campaign while neglecting to mention any plan that might progress actions within the UN. Though Jinping chose to not pinpoint Trump or the U.S., he definitely did address the humanitarian issues trump had cited. I think these addresses can heighten tensions between the nations as it appears Trump will do anything to keep “America first”.