In a moment that somehow turned into a national headline, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo took a break from global affairs to deliver glowing praise for Melania Trump—specifically, for walking up a stopped escalator. Yes, walking.
“Look how great Melania was. She is unfazed. She walks on it. It stops. She turns around to the president, and she just leads the president up and walks,” Bartiromo said during her broadcast, giving what sounded more like commentary on a slow-motion sports replay than an awkward UN entrance.
The escalator in question stopped mid-ride as President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were making their entrance at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. What should have been a brief glitch turned into full-blown chaos, at least in Trump-world, where every technical issue is either an insult or a conspiracy.
Bartiromo gushed over Melania’s response—simply walking up the rest of the short escalator—while casting the moment as a potential disaster. “It could’ve been a massive, massive issue,” she said, framing it as a moment of calm leadership amid mayhem. Meanwhile, Trump’s brief pause at the bottom of the stopped escalator, according to her, made him “vulnerable.”
The 79-year-old president, never one to let a slight (real or perceived) go unpunished, spent the rest of the day — and much of the next — fuming. From his speech being delayed by a dead teleprompter, to alleged mic issues, to that now-infamous escalator stop, Trump was irate.
During his UN address, he repeatedly broke from prepared remarks to complain. On Truth Social, he went even further, labeling the incidents as “three sinister events” and calling them “sabotage.”
“It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first,” Trump wrote. “It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster.”
The drama didn’t stop there. Trump demanded an immediate investigation and suggested the Secret Service was involved. Meanwhile, a source familiar with the incident told reporters that someone in Trump’s own entourage had accidentally triggered the emergency stop on the escalator.
The United Nations released a statement shortly after, noting that a videographer traveling with the U.S. delegation may have inadvertently hit the emergency mechanism while trying to capture the entrance.
Adding insult to injury, a second source confirmed it was Trump’s own team who had control of the teleprompter setup—and that they apparently weren’t ready in time.
None of that stopped Trump allies from spinning the situation into a broader attack on the UN itself, with calls to defund the organization gaining traction in MAGA circles.
Critics, however, saw the entire episode as yet another Trump sideshow—a trivial mishap turned into a political vendetta, complete with conspiracy theories and demands for investigations over an escalator and a teleprompter.
But through it all, Melania walked. And in the eyes of Fox News, that was the real story.
Watch the clip below:
Maria Bartiromo: "The escalator stopped as soon as he and the first lady stepped on it. Look at how great Melania was. She's unphased. She walks on it … but this could've been a massive, massive issue. The president being frozen there in one place makes him vulnerable." pic.twitter.com/1zDc4dAvaM
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2025
