Trump at UN pitches himself as the world’s leader but stone-faced General Assembly isn’t buying it

President Donald Trump on Tuesday left United Nations General Assembly delegates stupefied and stunned after a 40-minute speech that meandered from false boasts about his domestic economic record to threats against Iran to an incoherent rant about why Artificial Intelligence should be referred to as "superintelligence" instead.

Trump, who spoke in the customary time slot allocated to American presidents on the first day of speeches by heads of state and government at the annual gathering, appeared to have brought his usual political stump speech to the iconic green marble rostrum by opening his remarks with nearly ten straight minutes of bragging about American economic and domestic conditions of no interest to the global body.

He boasted about American stock markets and his administration’s massive tax cut for wealthy Americans that it enacted last year while describing the country as having been “dead” when he was sworn into office last January.

“We inherited a dark age of America from the previous administration, and we turned it into the golden age of America. The entire world is being lifted by the wealth, strength, spirit, and momentum of a newly energized and a very powerful United States of America,” he said before pivoting to self-aggrandizing remarks about the massive geostrategic blunder he committed nearly seven months ago by launching an unprovoked war against Iran.

“As president of the most extraordinary nation in history, I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day. I do not believe in letting problems fester; they only become harder to solve. So, while others have talked, I have acted,” he said.

“While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage. America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world.”

Trump then described the disastrous war that has upended global energy markets and threatened the world’s economic health as “solving decades of intractable challenges” and “settling years of unfinished business” while casting Tehran’s nuclear program as something his predecessors had simply ignored — a ridiculous assertion considering his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, negotiated a detailed multi-year agreement which he threw out during his first term.

He then prompted Iran’s delegation to walk out when he said he had a “big decision” to make on whether to make some sort of deal with Tehran or “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly.”

A short time later, he had the same effect on the Cuban delegation when he accused that country of “coordinating with the left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States” including Democratic-aligned organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America and threatening regime change on the Caribbean island.

“Communism will never be coming to America, but freedom will be coming to Cuba,” he said.

The president’s trip to the U.N. comes at a moment of sustained political weakness for him at home, with his standing in public polling at the lowest point of his political career and majorities telling pollsters they have turned against the war he started seven months ago.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday put his overall approval at 32 percent, the lowest figure recorded for him in that survey across either term. The four-day poll of 1,277 adults, which closed Sunday and carries a margin of error of three points, found approval among Republicans had slid to 73 percent from 82 percent a week earlier.

Just 17 percent of respondents approved of his handling of the cost of living — the issue voters consistently name as the one that will decide the Nov. 3 midterms — and for the first time, Republicans who disapprove of his handling of prices outnumbered those who approve, 51 percent to 44 percent. Only 24 percent approved of his handling of Iran. Registered voters preferred Democrats to Republicans for Congress by 43 percent to 35 percent, the widest margin Reuters/Ipsos has measured this year. A separate American Research Group survey taken Sept. 16-20 put his approval at 29 percent.

Instead, he left delegates sitting in stunned silence as he eventually pivoted to a string of nonsensical comments in which he attempted to rename an entire industry.

After reciting a prepared line about how the U.S. “totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme” for regulating Artificial Intelligence, he launched into another rant about how the technology would be “hereinafter officially called superintelligence” because “use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake.”

“It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It's actually amazing,” said Trump, who added that he was ordering the U.S. government to change documents to “use the much more accurate term "super" as opposed to artificial.”

“.In other words, welcome to the new world of superintelligence dash si. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it's much more accurate. Let's see if I have any power — maybe I do, and maybe I don't,” he said.

“We're going to find out pretty soon.”