Escalator-Gate: Why MAGA Is Furious At Trump's UN Debacle - And What Really Happened

We've had Pizza-gate and Spit-gate, now we have Escalator-gate. During the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, a misstep ended up causing a huge uproar online. While President Donald Trump's U.N. speech pages raised eyebrows, another event upstaged that.

When POTUS and first lady Melania Trump got on an escalator in the U.N. building, the contraption seemed to malfunction and stopped. Plenty of people have had to walk up an escalator that quit working. However, this particular incident raised more red flags than a speed dating event to many people because it appeared to leave the president vulnerable to an attack. It's much easier for an assassin to hit a stagnant target instead of a moving one. This led to the conspiracy of "Escalator-gate." Did someone cause the elevator to malfunction, or was it just a harmless error?

MAGA members put on their shiniest (red) tinfoil hats and went to town on X, formerly known as Twitter, sharing their theories. "It was a classic set up for an assasination hit, yet the Secret Service barely noticed and didn't pull POTUS and FLOTUS off the suddenly stopped stairs," one person tweeted. MediasTouch's official X account shared a collage of screenshots of others feeling the same way. What really happened is far less nefarious.

When Karoline Leavitt was asked about the incident and what the White House was planning to do about the situation, the controversial press secretary had some big feelings on the matter. "If we find these were U.N. staffers who were purposely trying to trip up, literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people, and I will personally see to it," she shared to Fox News host Jesse Watters (via X). It sounded as if Leavitt could deport the entire escalator to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, she would.

As it turns out, there's no need to pounce on anyone, because it was a total accident. Stephane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, shared that the elevator suddenly stopped because someone who went ahead before the Trumps accidentally hit the stop mechanism located at the top of the escalator. "The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing," Dujarric said in a statement. "The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function" (via AP).

It's quite easy to hit the stop mechanism by accident, as one person demonstrated on YouTube. What really got everyone in a tizzy was that the escalator incident was quickly followed by the teleprompter malfunctioning during POTUS's speech. The AP reported that a U.N. official anonymously shared it was Trump's own team who operated the teleprompter, not anyone who worked for the U.N.