UNITED NATIONS — President Donald Trump’s first U.N. General Assembly since returning to the White House forced the organization to defend its importance and mere existence. And during this past week’s high-level debate, it wasn’t clear the world’s largest diplomatic body made that argument.

The week of speeches, sideline meetings and traffic-jammed New York streets was consumed with uncertainty and a certain nihilism about the future of the organization. The U.S. had already pledged to cut millions from its contribution to the U.N. budget ahead of the gathering, and the Trump administration has repeatedly questioned whether the organization serves any purpose. The U.N. is regularly criticized as a talking shop, but many diplomats argue it is also a key space where countries can develop solutions to international crises.

That tone was set on Tuesday — the first day of debate — when the U.S. president excoriated the organization as ineffective.

“I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal,” Trump said in his remarks. He said he liked the idea of the U.N. but that it wasn’t “even coming close” to living up to its potential.

Almost confirming his point, the U.N. organization itself wasn’t a major player in developments of the week. Its efforts to punish Russia for breaching NATO airspace, hold Israel accountable for its conduct of the war in Gaza and address Iran’s nuclear program fell flat.

However, the world leaders who descended on New York did get some wins from the Trump administration and on other issues.

The high-level week and speeches at the General Assembly continue through Monday. But for the most part, many of the leaders and major delegations had left New York by the time the weekend rolled around.

Here’s what caught our eye, and what was notably absent, at this year’s gathering:

Combative toward Trump, but not too combative

The United Nations’ top leaders did not approach Trump with the same kind of obeisance as their counterparts at other global forums in recent months. There were no efforts to obsequiously flatter the U.S. president — no gifts, no calling Trump “Daddy,” no long laudatory remarks from top U.N. officials about the Trump administration’s contributions to global peace.

In the lead-up to the General Assembly debate, a number of major U.S. allies bucked the Trump administration by formally recognizing a Palestinian state, including France, Canada and the U.K. The Trump administration had threatened earlier in the year that such a move — which the U.S. and Israel say is a reward to Hamas militants for their 2023 attack — would be punished.

Many heads of state also criticized Trump administration policies in their speeches. Various Latin American leaders protested the decision to strike alleged drug trafficking vessels off the waters of Venezuela. Others slammed Trump for his targeting of Brazil over the prosecution of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, for proposing that Palestinians evacuate Gaza and for cutting billions of dollars of U.S. foreign assistance.

Even so, the moves seemed calibrated to needle rather than enrage Trump. Officials from some of the countries recognizing a Palestinian state said that Trump officials had privately given indications it wouldn’t make a big deal of the declarations. And in fact, Trump officials met the move with a shrug.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, did note that it was the U.S. who brokered ceasefires and treaties between Thailand and Cambodia and Armenia and Azerbaijan. On Tuesday, he said in a meeting with Trump “we are entirely at your disposal to work together toward a just peace.”

Trump also received plenty of praise in the General Assembly from a number of fellow world leaders, especially those looking to keep the White House in their corners and secure deals to their advantage. Notably in this camp were Argentine President Javier Milei, who is looking to secure a major economic bailout from the Treasury Department, and Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, who is seeking to mend relations with Washington. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism, hobble Iran’s nuclear program and support Israel’s military endeavors.

Escalators and teleprompters took center stage

It’s usually fiery speeches or landmark deals that garner headlines at the U.N. gathering. This year a few equipment glitches created a swirl of conspiracy theories and debate over who to blame.

As Trump and the first lady boarded an escalator on Tuesday, it ground to a halt. Trump’s teleprompter also wasn’t working at the beginning of his speech, and so he directed much of his ire at the U.N. at these very specific logistical issues.

“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” Trump said. He also went on a rant about renovations to the U.N. building having been too expensive.

Trump administration officials accused U.N. staff of potentially sabotaging the escalator and the teleprompter as a way to humiliate the U.S. president. Trump said he’d mobilized the Secret Service to investigate, while calling on the U.N. to do the same.

U.N. officials immediately went on the defensive, and released a statement saying that a White House videographer “may have inadvertently triggered the safety function” in the escalator. It has not acknowledged the other incidents. The videos of the Trumps stuck on the escalator also took on a life of their own, circulating on social media and inspiring several late night show monologues.

The back-and-forth over the incidents highlighted the extent to which the U.N. is having to fight to preserve its reputation as a key world body both in Washington and globally.

A rallying around Ukraine, sort of

In the run-up to the General Assembly, Russia flew drones into the airspace of a number of Eastern European countries, raising worries of the Ukraine war spilling quickly into neighboring nations. Trump’s initial reactions to the incursions were tepid, so European representatives expressed relief when Trump said Tuesday that NATO should shoot down any such Russia drones. And then they were elated when Trump quickly followed that with a social media post proclaiming Ukraine could indeed win the war and take back all of its territory.

It appeared to be a major realignment of the Trump administration toward supporting Ukraine in the war, following months of Trump focusing on concessions Ukraine would have to make for peace. It also brought cautious hope to Ukraine’s allies that the U.S. would resume supporting Ukraine with equipment.

But fears quickly began percolating that Trump’s comments were more an indication he was leaving Europe to bear the burden of backing Kyiv.

Trump “was the one who promised to stop the killing,” top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas said in an interview with POLITICO Thursday. “So it can’t be on us.”

And Russia’s aggression shows no sign of letting up. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the General Assembly on Saturday that “Russia is open to negotiations” — but said nothing about easing the conditions Russia has put on such talks, many of which are red lines for Kyiv and Europe.

And worrying European allies, Lavrov said at a G20 meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly that the EU and NATO had “already declared a real war” on Moscow by supporting Ukraine.

Those who weren’t there caught as much attention as those who were

Ahead of the week of meetings in New York, the Trump administration took the rare step of denying visas for aides from a litany of countries over policy disagreements.

That included all representatives from the Palestinian Authority, including President Mahmoud Abbas. The U.S. administration said this was because of ties to terrorist groups, though the move was largely seen as an effort to undercut the push for wider recognition of a Palestinian state.

Abbas was forced to address the global confab via a streamed video link. It’s unlikely an in-person presence would have made a difference in terms of resolutions around the Gaza war, but the U.N. is also one of the few venues open to the Palestinian Authority to make its case to the world.

The U.S. also blocked some officials from Iran and Brazil from attending — the Iranians for alleged terror ties and Brazil’s health minister over a partnership with Cuba to hire Cuban doctors to work in the country’s remote poor regions — but their heads of state and foreign ministers experienced no issues attending the global confab.

In some countries, the visa revocations were even celebrated. The New York Times reported that some Gambians reacted with joy that their officials were blocked from coming to the United States for the global confab amid an immigration-related dispute with Washington, arguing officials treated those trips as vacations paid for out of the public treasury.

It is unclear whether the U.S. will continue blocking visas for major forums in the future. The State Department revoked Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa to enter the United States over comments he made at a pro-Palestinian protest in New York, signaling that the U.S. may apply visa scrutiny widely for future gatherings.

The U.N. made progress on at least a few issues

Plenty of issues didn’t move forward at the U.N. The U.S. blocked formal recognition of a Palestinian state by the organization and talks broke down over international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program.

But there was some progress on Haiti, in part because the U.S. invested considerable resources on the issue. A U.S.-backed proposal to strengthen a multinational support mission to bolster the Caribbean country’s embattled police gained some traction in discussions over the week and will be considered by the Security Council on Tuesday.

The measures would expand funding and contributions to the mission. The mission, currently led by a detachment of Kenyan police officers, has struggled to help Haiti’s beleaguered central government defeat well-armed criminal groups in the country. The U.S. brought the top U.S. diplomat in Port-au-Prince Henry Wooster to New York for meetings and secured commitments from other countries in the Western Hemisphere for funding support.

Yet it’s unclear if Russia and China will back the proposal to strengthen the multinational mission when the Security Council votes on it next week.

Meanwhile, Trump put out a proposal for a post-war Gaza in a meeting with Arab and Middle Eastern leaders that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described as “fruitful.” The proposal did not, however, provide a way forward in currently stalled negotiations. There could be progress on that when Netanyahu meets with Trump in Washington on Monday — though the two leaders seems to have different impressions of how close they are.

No fixes to U.N. dysfunction on the horizon

Complaints about the fecklessness of the United Nations in the face of global crises long predated Trump’s speech indicting the organization. But unlike at other General Assembly high-level weeks, this year was scant on any discussion of reform.

Last year, Guterres held a forum on the sidelines of the General Assembly which produced a non-binding pact to reform global governance. Yet few references were made to the Pact of the Future this year, and other proposals Guterres has put forward to advance U.N. reform were far from the main topic of discussion around the General Assembly.

Guterres acknowledged the challenges ahead for the organization in his opening remarks Tuesday.

“We are being hit by rising geopolitical tensions and divisions, chronic uncertainty, and mounting financial strain,” he said. “But those who depend on the United Nations must not be made to bear the cost. Especially now — when for every dollar invested to support our core work to build peace, the world spends 750 dollars on weapons of war. This is not only unsustainable — it is indefensible.”

There’s also some resignation that the U.S., as the host country and the largest financial backer of the United Nations, will throw its weight around regardless of what structures are put in place, exacerbating the root defects of the institutions.

“It would be necessary to fix some of its member states, and in particular the most permanent of the five permanent, which is the one that exercises a policy of manipulating the United Nations,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said in an interview. “How can we blame the United Nations for what a superpower that is a member state does?”

Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing and Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.