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Trump UN Speech on Iran, Greenland and Cuba: Jim Pfaff on Worldview Tube | Sep 22, 2026

Published: September 22, 2026
Network: Worldview Tube — Washington Report
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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President Trump spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on the morning of September 22, and the Washington Report on Worldview Tube gave most of that day’s program to it. Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff took the Trump UN speech section by section: the choice Trump laid out for Iran between a deal and annihilation, the security agreement on Greenland signed with Denmark at the UN that morning, the Cuban delegation walking out, and what the speech means for Brazil, where Pfaff says Flávio Bolsonaro may be about to win. He closed on the institution itself.

Topics Covered

• Iran: A Deal or Annihilation, and Not a Rhetorical Question
• Not a Forever-War President
• The Greenland Agreement and the Art of the Deal
• Cuba Walks Out: Moral Indignation or Cowardice
• Brazil, the Bolsonaros and the UN Itself
• Key Takeaways

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Iran in the Trump UN Speech: A Deal or Annihilation

The host opened with the Iran passage. Trump told the General Assembly he has a big decision to make: whether a deal will be made that lets Iran rebuild and become a far greater country than it ever was, or whether he will annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly. He said he believes a deal will come right after the election, because Iran is waiting to see how he does in the midterms, and added that he is not running, that the election does not enter his mind on Iran, and that the only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.

The host wondered whether the framing was a rhetorical question. Pfaff said it was not.

“I don’t think it’s rhetorical. I think he’s determined to do one of those two things.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He pointed to the look on the face of Iran’s UN ambassador, which to him was a combination of concern and dismissiveness, which is what he says the Iranian regime has been doing. Pfaff was plain about his own position: if Trump is talking about annihilating them from the air, he would have done that a long time ago and gotten it over with. Trump, he said, has been trying as best he can not to have to.

He also flagged the political line in the speech. Trump sees Iran being resolved after the election, and Pfaff said Republicans on the campaign trail need to settle that in their own minds and make the case for what Republicans have actually done for Americans — limited in scope compared with what he would like to have seen by this point, he said, but definitely in the positive direction.

Not a Forever-War President

What Pfaff drew from the Trump UN speech was not only the threat but the restraint behind it.

“I think this is a guy who is not into forever wars. I think he has maintained that, and that position is frankly the right one to take. It has potential political costs, which he’s aware of.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

War is always a political decision at its core, Pfaff said, and you can never entirely divorce it from political outcomes. What Americans have always wanted from their presidents is that they not decide on the political outcome alone, and not go into a war to win an election. Trump, he said, has clearly not done that. His standard for the rest of the record was harsher.

“I would argue that most of the wars that we have undertaken since World War II have been about politics and not about the necessity of coming to some end, often not determined based upon real harm, potential harm to the country.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

His one possible exception is the first year of the Afghan war, when the country knew al-Qaeda was being held in Afghanistan by the Taliban — probably an appropriate response to 9/11. But that led to a continual ground war that, in his view, we should have known would bring problems similar to those Russia suffered there in the 1980s, which embarrassed Russia and, he said, in many ways embarrassed us too, particularly the way Joe Biden left Afghanistan, gave away the store and left the weapons behind.

Pfaff said he always has misgivings about going to war and was very, very frustrated when this one started. That frustration has gone away as he has watched the propriety with which Trump has conducted it. Two things stood out to him. First, this is not an Israeli war that the U.S. was dragged into; Israel took part in the early stages, but the claim that Trump was led along by the nose ring is, in his words, “a farce and a lie.” Second, Trump has conducted it toward a specific end, which he stated clearly at the UN.

He recommended his earlier conversation on the same question, available on theconservativecaucus.com: his interview with Col. Rob Maness on why Iran is not an endless war.

The Greenland Agreement and the Art of the Deal

The second news item from the UN that morning, alongside the Trump UN speech, was the security agreement for Greenland, signed that morning with Denmark’s prime minister and officials from Greenland. The program played her remarks: 75 years ago the two countries entered an agreement on the defense of Greenland, and this one is bigger and better, “a deal that can last forever,” one that makes sure adversaries will not get control or significant influence in Greenland and brings more allies into the Arctic.

The host called it good news and something a lot of people did not see coming, given how Trump had talked about Greenland and the pushback from Denmark. Pfaff disagreed with the second half. He recalled — he believed it was Ambassador Pete Hoekstra — the answer to the critics on Greenland: read his book, The Art of the Deal.

“A lot of people misunderstand Donald Trump in frankly stupid ways, in my opinion, because they don’t even take anything into consideration. They hear what they perceive as bombast.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

To Pfaff, that bombast is the diplomacy the country needs with friends, allies and adversaries alike: an assertion of American prominence. That prominence comes mostly from economic power. India and China are far more populous, so by weight of population the U.S. is swinging above its head, because it has the freest economy and the most fundamentally free system of governance in the world — one he says Democrats have taken a lot of steps this century to destroy, particularly in elections. Americans are not more inherently good than anyone else, he said; six thousand years of recorded history prove the moral depravity of mankind. The system has some inherent goodness in it, and that is what earns the prominence the country should be asserting — not constantly militarily, though sometimes it may come to that against real enemies who have been killing thousands of Americans, as Iran has.

“This approach to Greenland was absolutely the right one to take. You got to start with the outrageous point to get to negotiate back to the good point, which is exactly what happened here.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

His parallel was Reykjavik. Pfaff recalled Peggy Noonan writing about Ronald Reagan’s meeting with Gorbachev in Iceland, early in the talks on nuclear weapons, when the meeting broke up early and Reagan had called the Soviet Union an evil empire in the room. Noonan, as Pfaff remembered it, described the collective bedwetting of the diplomats, because Reagan did not treat anything the way it had been treated before — and that was one of the steps that led to the downfall of the Soviet empire. Both Reagan and Trump survived assassination attempts, Pfaff said, and both took from it a sense of calling: I survived this, I have to make it count. He counts the Greenland agreement among the outcomes that would not have happened otherwise after Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

Whatever happens in November and in the last two and a half years of the presidency, Pfaff said, Trump will have radically and positively changed things on the world stage and at home — and that is why he is not making politics his primary consideration.

Cuba Walks Out: Moral Indignation or Cowardice

After the break the program played the Cuba passage of the Trump UN speech. Trump called Cuba an absolutely failed state that will fall, said Marco Rubio is deep into negotiations with Cuba, and said the Cuban regime has spent decades coordinating with left-wing radicals and communist networks in the United States, citing State Department findings on ties to the Communist Party USA, Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America. “Communism will never be coming to America,” Trump said, “but freedom will be coming to Cuba.” The host noted that Cuban officials got up and left the room, which he said kind of proved Trump’s point that the regime is going to fall. Pfaff’s reading went further.

“They’re doing that as a gesture of moral indignation that they feel like they can do in a place like the UN, which is filled with corrupt states. But it’s not moral indignation at all. It’s cowardice. It is entirely cowardice because they are part of the direct attempt to overthrow the American Republic as well.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Venezuela did the same, he said, until Trump went in and shut that down, and Cuba is next and knows it. Every communist and socialist movement in this country, almost entirely inside the Democrat Party, has been funded, encouraged or supported in some manner by Cuba and Venezuela in this hemisphere. Trump has the moral high ground, Pfaff said — politically, diplomatically and biblically, because the country should be working to seek God’s way so it can be an influence for good in the world.

He called the policy a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, now often called the Donroe Doctrine, which has been missing for a long time. Reagan tried some of it, with some success and mostly failure that led even to the Iran-Contra affair. In that sense, Pfaff said, Trump eclipses Reagan’s efforts, and the change has inspired conservative leaders in South America and, in Argentina, a libertarian-minded one. He added one more cause: Trump got rid of USAID funding, which Pfaff says was funding the imposition of radical leftist governments in this hemisphere and around the world, all without a lot of war.

Brazil, the Bolsonaros and the UN Itself

Trump’s changes in the hemisphere, Pfaff said, may lead in a couple of weeks to the election of Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil, a radical change from Lula da Silva, whom he called a real communist, and a judiciary he described as highly corrupt. Pfaff has a personal stake. He knows the Bolsonaro family and many of the key players in Brazil’s Congress and media (for background, see our report on the Brazilian congressional delegation and the censorship hearing). Eduardo Bolsonaro, the other son, now in exile in the United States, is a friend of his. Pfaff has said on his X profile that if Bolsonaro wins he is going to Brazil for the inauguration, and people in Brasília have already told him he is staying with them.

The host noted that Flávio is Jair Bolsonaro’s son; Pfaff confirmed Jair is still in prison, and the host added that he is serving a 27-year sentence. Pfaff’s account: people wanted Jair Bolsonaro as president in 2018 and got him; the 2022 election he lost was stolen from him; and since then he has been jailed and accused of a coup he never attempted, in what Pfaff called a lawless nation under a communist leader and a communist- and corporatist-influenced judiciary.

“And it was a sham trial. I watched it and observed it very closely. There were even justices on the equivalent of their Supreme Court who decried the process to convict Bolsonaro. And it was an outrage, and it is an outrage to this day.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

With time running out, the host mentioned clips from the Trump UN speech they did not get to: Trump calling the UN’s top human rights officials hypocrites, and its push for illegal immigration through UNESCO. Pfaff answered for the whole institution.

“Listen, the UN are criminals and crooks. It’s a fraudulent organization. I don’t know why we have not gotten out of it to this stage. We’ve been talking about it for years, this would be the time to do it.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The UN, he said, is filled two-thirds or more with countries that act absurdly in international relations, with very few non-scoundrels among those sent to represent them, and he is glad for Trump’s leadership there.

Key Takeaways

1. The Iran choice is not rhetorical – In the Trump UN speech, the president said it is a deal or annihilation, with a deal expected after the election. Pfaff says Trump is determined to do one of the two and has to follow through.
2. Trump is not running wars for votes – Pfaff argues most U.S. wars since World War II were about politics; Trump’s restraint carries potential political costs he is aware of, and the claim that Israel dragged him in is “a farce and a lie.”
3. Greenland shows the negotiating pattern – Start with the outrageous point and negotiate back to the good one. Greenland, Pfaff says, is roughly half the land shield against missiles fired over the top of the world.
4. Cuba’s walkout was cowardice – Pfaff ties Cuba and Venezuela to communist movements inside the U.S. and calls Trump’s hemisphere policy a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine that eclipses Reagan’s efforts.
5. Brazil may be next – Pfaff says Flávio Bolsonaro looks likely to win, calls Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction a sham trial, and plans to attend the inauguration if Bolsonaro is elected.
6. The UN is “criminals and crooks” – Pfaff says this would be the time for the United States to get out of it.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Sep 22, 2026 on Worldview Tube — Washington Report.