(NEW YORK) -- After President Donald Trump complained about having to deal with a stopped escalator during his visit to the United Nations, White House officials are demanding an investigation.
As first lady Melania Trump and the president stepped onto the escalator ahead of his speech on Tuesday morning, it stopped moving, prompting both of them to stop in their tracks.
The first couple then proceeded to walk up the escalator.
The U.N. has said that there appears to have been no foul play.
But that explanation hasn't satisfied White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who vowed to get to the bottom of Tuesday's incident.
"If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately," she said in an X post.
Leavitt repeated her warnings on Fox News Tuesday night, but didn't provide any evidence that what happened what deliberate.
"I know that we have people, including United States Secret Service, who are looking into this to try to get to the bottom of it," she said.
At the start of the president's address, his teleprompter also malfunctioned, which he complained about at the time and then again later in the day.
"The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden halt as we were riding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty,” Trump posted on his social media platform.
The United Nations issued a statement about the incident, saying that the escalator stopping might have been triggered by a safety feature as a videographer was standing backward on the escalator, ahead of the president, while trying to film him.
"The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above," the U.N. statement said.
“Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor. A subsequent investigation, including a readout of the machine's central processing unit, indicated that the escalator had stopped after a built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the escalator,” the U.N. statement continued. “The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”
The U.N. has not immediately provided details about the teleprompter malfunction.
The White House has no additional comment on Wednesday.
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