Decoding Trump’s UN Speech: Part 3 — Climate, Energy, and the War on Europe’s Competitiveness
- john raymond
- Sep 24, 2025
- 2 min read
After migration and crime, Trump’s third cudgel in his September 23 UN address targeted climate policy and energy. Where Part 1 exposed his attack on institutions and Part 2 showed his demonization of migrants, Part 3 reveals his assault on Europe’s economic model.
He mocked decades of UN climate warnings, calling them “the greatest con job ever perpetrated.” He derided European investments in renewables, sneering at “windmills” and “massive solar panels that go seven miles by seven miles, taking away farmland.” And he insisted that European electricity bills were four to five times higher than China’s, declaring his own creed in three words: “drill, baby, drill.”
The rhetorical design is clear. Trump is not simply criticizing climate science; he is weaponizing energy prices to inflame public resentment. His argument runs as follows: UN elites pushed Europe into climate folly, Europe followed, and now European citizens suffer while China prospers.
The frame is that of betrayal and humiliation. The villain is again multilateralism; the victim is the Western working class. It is a cudgel aimed directly at Europe’s political core.
In terms of the Raymond Method, this fits the pattern...
Pillar One (Regime Security): he grounds legitimacy in cheap domestic energy, casting fossil fuel extraction as the foundation of sovereignty.
Pillar Two (Asymmetric Warfare): he redefines climate policy as self-inflicted weakness, converting a long-term civilizational project into immediate political pain.
Pillar Three (the Byzantine Traitor-General paradigm): he maneuvers European governments into appearing both duped and complicit, eroding their authority at home and abroad.
The deeper function is destabilization. European publics are already stretched by inflation, war-related energy shocks, and industrial competition from Asia. By ridiculing green policy as economic suicide, Trump sharpens discontent and strengthens the hand of nationalist parties eager to tear down Brussels’ consensus.
This is fertile ground for populism every bit as much as migration is. The two wedges work together: migration fuels cultural resentment, energy fuels economic resentment. In both, the result is the same—weakening the EU’s center and opening the door to Kremlin-friendly disruption.
This part of the speech, therefore, was not a throwaway to appease fossil lobbies in the U.S. It was a calculated international strike.
By telling Europe that climate action is a scam and that only fossil expansion brings prosperity, Trump undermines Europe’s legitimacy, deepens its fractures, and makes it less capable of collective resolve.
The target is not just climate policy—it is the unity of the West.
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