International body says mishap appears to have been caused by accidental triggering of built-in safety mechanism.

The United Nations has been forced to issue a statement offering an innocent explanation for an escalator malfunction involving US President Donald Trump after the White House raised the possibility of sabotage.

In an incident shortly before Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the US president and the first lady, Melania Trump, had to walk up an escalator when the stairway came to an abrupt halt moments after they stepped on.

The snafu drew the ire of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said on X that any UN staff found to have intentionally stopped the escalator should be “fired and investigated immediately”.

In her post, Leavitt included a screenshot of an article by The Times in which the British newspaper’s Washington editor, Katy Balls, said that UN staff had joked about shutting off escalators and elevators so Trump “has to walk up the stairs”.

Responding to the furore, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the malfunction may have been inadvertently caused by a videographer from Trump’s delegation who stepped onto the escalator ahead of the president and the first lady.

“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,” Dujarric said in a statement.

“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.”

Steven Cheung, Trump’s director of communications, did not respond to a message seeking a response to the UN statement.

Trump himself appeared to take the mishap in his stride, joking during his UN speech that all he got from the international body was a “bad escalator and a bad teleprompter”.

“If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape,” Trump said, prompting laughter among the audience.

“We’re both in good shape.”

Trump later addressed the incident again in a post on his platform Truth Social.

“The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden hault as we were ridding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise,” Trump wrote.

“It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty.”