President Trump has officially arrived at his first United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City. His focus for the week is reforming the international body with continued goals of promoting peace and prosperity.
Shortly after making his way into the building Monday morning the President gave remarks ahead of a high profile day of meetings with world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"I applaud the Secretary General for laying out a vision to reform the United Nations so that it better serves the people we all represent. We support your efforts to look across the entire system and to find ways the United Nations can better, and be better at development, management, peace, and security," Trump said during remarks at the first UNGA meeting on reform Monday morning. "In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement. While the United Nations on a regular budget has increased by 140 percent, and its staff has more than doubled since 2000, we are not seeing the results in line with this investment."
"To honor the people of our nations, we must ensure that no one and no member state shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden, and that's militarily or financially. We also ask that every peacekeeping mission have clearly defined goals and metrics for evaluating success. They deserve to see the value in the United Nations, and it is our job to show it to them," he continued.
The President will speak the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. Last week UN Ambassador Nikki Haley previewed his remarks during the daily White House press briefing.
"To start off with the speech that the President gives, I think you can see it for yourself. I personally think he slaps the right people, he hugs the right people, and he comes out with the U.S. being very strong in the end," Haley said. "We're moving foreign policy. We're changing the way peacekeeping is done. We're really bringing up human rights. And more importantly, what I appreciate is they stopped focusing on the commas and the periods, and we're actually acting. We're actually seeing strong things happens."