President Donald Trump urged all nations to “immediately” resign from the “rogue institution” of the International Criminal Court (ICC) during his Tuesday speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
His comments about the ICC come after the tribunal issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials accused of war crimes for conduct in Gaza. Trump has consistently opposed ICC-issued warrants. In the months leading up to the UN meeting, the U.S. sanctioned numerous members of the ICC’s staff in response to the Israeli arrest warrants, and is reportedly planning a more extensive sanctions package, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The United States is equally opposed to the out-of-control institution known as the International Criminal Court. We will never allow U.S. service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us,” Trump said. “They’re an evil group of people. I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately.”
Trump did not mention Netanyahu by name in his speech, only mentioning the ICC’s lack of jurisdiction over the U.S., which has never recognized the ICC. Israel is also not a member country.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in July said that the U.S. would launch a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty,” stating it would do so “brick by brick” if that is what it took.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the new sanctions package could include blocking the ICC “from conducting transactions in U.S. dollars,” which would render it incapable of accessing “much of the global financial system.”
Trump criticized a wider array of globalist institutional enterprises as well, such as the UN Human Rights Council, which consistently ignores “genuine atrocities in the world,” while “criticizing the United States for protecting our children from transgender mutilation and transgender insanity, and enforcing our immigration laws,” Trump told the UN.
“The craven hypocrites of Human Rights Council have little to say about the persecution of Christians,” he added, “Yet they want America to open up our borders to gangs and criminals from world’s most dangerous places. They want the worst people to come in from the worst places on earth, and we don’t do it anymore.”
Trump mentioned that it is “deeply ironic” that the UN simultaneously has the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is “devoted to protecting cultural heritage.”
“Yet, with their ceaseless promotion of mass migration, these globalists are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in all of history,” he said. “There is no human right to illegal immigration, but there is a right to remain a sovereign nation, and we want to remain a sovereign nation, and so should you.”
According to Trump, American-initiated reforms at the UN have cut the budget by 15 percent and cut over 4,000 bureaucrats from its staff. U.S. intervention also stopped the UN’s International Maritime Organization from “secretly” creating a global carbon tax — a tax Trump said would increase global shipping costs by 10 to 20 percent.
“And while I’m president, there will be no global taxes,” Trump said. “The United Nations has great, great potential — I’ve said that for many years — but it must stop imposing the far-left agenda of globalist bureaucrats who nobody ever elected.”
