UN Candidate Macky Sall Backs Trump: 'Make UN Great Again'

WASHINGTON — Macky Sall, the former President of Senegal and a leading candidate to be the next Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), told Breitbart News exclusively he supports American President Donald Trump’s push to reform the UN and wants to, as Trump and his team say, “Make the UN Great Again.”

“My first message to President Trump is first to congratulate him for his action on peace,” Sall said in a phone interview ahead of a recent trip to Washington. “He’s a peace builder, even if sometimes we have some problems today with Iran, but what he did is huge on one year of peace in the world, around the world, and he has to continue this process to be and to stay a peace builder. The second is United States are the first power in the world to be with the UN, they need to be with the UN, but the UN also should be reformed to be efficient and with other member states together we can build a better UN, or to MUNGA — we can Make the UN Great Again.”

Sall is one of several candidates to succeed António Guterres as Secretary General of the United Nations. The election will happen in the fall at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September and is a complicated process by which candidates will need to survive any vetoes from U.N. Security Council members and then gain enough support from leaders around the world to win. Whoever wins will take over in January and serve a five-year term. Sall, whose nation Senegal is very close with France, has support from the French and makes clear he has close relations from his time as president with all of the major world leaders especially the permanent Security Council members, which are the called the P5 of the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom. The fact that Sall is openly embracing the idea of “MUNGA,” or “Make the UN Great Again,” is a significant development that closely mirrors what Trump and his team are trying to do at the behemoth world diplomacy forum that they argue has lost its way. Late last year, Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz sat for a lengthy exclusive interview with Breitbart News on the floor of the UNGA to detail the vision for MUNGA — Making the UN Great Again — in which he explained a lot of this has to do with spending cuts and eliminating woke or redundant mandates.

Sall, in his interview with Breitbart News, openly embraced that vision. Sall, who was president of Senegal for 12 years and previously served in key positions throughout his country’s government and also served as President of the African Union and of ECOWAS, argues that the United States’s warnings must be heeded by the United Nations if the UN is to survive.

“It is possible, with the support of the member states, to make this reform,” Sall told Breitbart News. “I have the capacity as a political leader. I can be secretary, but also general if necessary to bring the big powers to talk together, because we need at the UN—even if today I agree with the U.S. position—we need to reform the UN, we need to optimize the reform, we need to avoid the overlapping of the mandate, and also to be more sufficient on the budget so if people want someone who is able to be a very independent secretary general and very able to work closely and diplomatically and not to be on the press all time but who can also talk with people on the right way I think I will be also the best partner for the United States. Of course, I know the U.S. was the one who created the UN after the Second World War, and I think with the role of the United Nations, the United States is to continue to be a leader on this organization. Of course, we need to reform, we need to optimize the management, and to cut the cost that I’m sure if I have the support of United States, I can work very closely and put them together with the other partners—particularly Europe, Asia, China and Russia and Africa.”

Sall argues his history has him uniquely positions to confront these major challenges the United Nations faces today. He said his time as President of Senegal brought him close with Trump, but also with Chinese President Xi Jinping and with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He maintains close relations, too, with the French and has been to Paris to meet President Emmanuel Macron multiple times in recent months. Sall thinks his personal relationships with the major players and his past of working with each of them allows him to navigate the deep areas of mistrust between all the world powers.

“I was president of Senegal for 12 years, and two terms. The first term was seven years. I made a reform to bring it back to five years,” Sall told Breitbart News. “So I do seven and five, and I was also president of the ECOWAS in 2015 and President of the African Union [AU] from 2022 to 2023. During this I made the advocacy to bring AU into the G20 summit, and now we have permanent seat in G20 because of that very, very strong advocacy we did—and because of the economic reason for the population, 1.5 billion people today and projected to be 2.5 billion in 2050 and also a GDP of $3 trillion. We thought Africa should be a member of that, and all G20 members were very keen to accept that and that shows if the political leadership is here we can move forward and we can make big progress. Now, after my service in my country, and I was Prime Minister before I was president—I was the Speaker of the House, and had many, many positions in the government. I think today I am able first to talk to all the leaders from the West, and from the East, because I used to work with them during my 12 years as president. I knew, maybe not very strongly, President Trump during his first term and I used to work with his predecessor and his successor—I mean Obama and Biden, and of course when Trump came back I already left the year before. I think I know very well also the Chinese President because I co-chaired with him the China Africa Forum during six years, so we have a very, very—we can talk and we discussed a lot and we worked a lot. Same with President Putin, and of course with France and Europeans and Africa also. So I think my interest is to bring this capacity of dialogue and to build bridges between the countries, because today the problem of the UN is no trust between particularly the big powers and no big dialogue and no reform. We need to do this reform and my aim is as an outsider. I can do the reform because I have no interest before. I know the UN, of course, as president—not as a staff member of the UN. I’m sure I will be the one who can first bring the dialogue for the agenda on the three pillars of the UN: the security, of course, peace and security; the human rights in the world; and, of course, the question of development, and also to focus on this prevention instead of just sending peacekeeping missions. Sometimes they go for 40 years, 50 years.”

Sall told Breitbart News he wants to cut spending at the UN, and to also importantly simplify the mandates that various institutions inside the UN have—many of which overlap with each other and others that are totally unnecessary.

He said he wants to “change the way the mandates are given” and said the UN has given more than 40,000 mandates since its inception.

“The UN is not able to even stop some mandates to make the evaluation and maybe to kill the mandate and to have a new something,” Sall said, arguing this needs to change, and also that it is “very crucial” to “avoid the overlapping.”

“You have many organizations in the UN who do the same—quite the same—and they don’t work on them necessarily the right way so we can avoid this overlapping mandates and we can optimize also with the people and also see how to put more people in the area where maybe it is less expensive,” Sall said. “I can do that as Secretary General if elected.”

Sall also said UN peacekeeping operations are rife with waste.

“We, because I was in Africa, I saw how sometimes these peace operations are wasting money, and they have no efficiencies,” Sall said. “We can really redefine the way this can be done, and we can optimize the budget and do more prevention to avoid crises so that means big diplomacy in the front before the crises are starting.”

Sall also said that the job of the Secretary General of the UN is not just “on the administration side” but also “to be on the diplomacy prevention and talking closely with the member states, particularly the security council members and the P5 to work together and to confront this distrust between them and to optimize what we are doing.”

“We need the UN at the end—because it is the only universal platform that can handle the big challenges we have in the world,” Sall said. “Of course the United States has power, the first superpower, I think they have to lead, they have to be here. But we should listen to what they said and we should reduce the cost when it is possible but we should keep also the main pillars, why the United Nations was created, which is peace in the world, peace and stability, to find a way for migration, all those kinds of challenges we can properly with the governments and with the member states find a good agenda and that I think I can do because I have this experience.”

When it comes to migration and terrorism, Sall also openly embraced the UN doing more to combat terrorism and open borders policies—and stepping up to lead a global effort to stop irregular migration.

“For terrorism, it’s necessary,” he said. “I think the UN is doing some but not enough—not enough, of course. But this is a discipline also of the member states. The UN should be the first platform around the world working with the member states to have the clear mission to fight against terrorism, particularly in Africa and Middle East, but everywhere in the world. Number two, we at the UN should be also a good platform to tackle the problem of migration because to tackle migration is also one part to fight all the violence in the other countries because terrorism and violence put people around on the irregular migration. We should see how to keep the people in their countries by giving opportunity and transforming the minerals and materials. It gives jobs and also adds value for those countries and with that they should keep also their youth who don’t just take the illegal migration ways going to the U.S. or to Europe or to somewhere else and it is possible when we put it on the table and find a way it will be not us who is fighting only or alone against illegal migration. It will be a global fight, and we see how to organize this fight. I think it is something we can do together.”

Sall did this interview with Breitbart News via phone before a trip to Washington a couple weeks ago, where he met with the State Department and other Trump administration officials. He mentioned too that he wanted to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and particularly with Waltz since Waltz is the man Trump has charged with reforming the United Nations—especially after last year’s issues at the UNGA with Trump and the escalator and the teleprompter.

Sall even mentioned possibly shipping some UN staff to other offices around the world to reduce costs and pay them less—Republicans in Washington regularly discuss this kind of idea to shrink the size of the federal government in the United States, so this is a UN-level worldwide diplomacy reform version of that. He said that artificial intelligence can help reduce redundancies at the UN staff-wise as well.

“Now, about the reform, I totally agree that we can reduce the personnel, the people, the staff, and I think they are starting to do that quite frankly,” Sall told Breitbart News. “They started, and we can optimize that, and I think it is with the way people are paid—particularly in New York, because New York is a very expensive place, it is possible to put some of them in the other UN headquarters like Nairobi or like Bangkok and also using AI we can optimize what the UN is doing. I will give you some examples. The UN is expanding on software and the system they are using in different systems with different agencies, and I think it’s time to optimize all this to have the same procurement system and the same payment system for all the organization wherever the agencies are. It should be the same one, same platform, same with the languages. You have six official languages in the UN, so with AI you can optimize all this with less cost and seriously I think if we open the books with the member states, particularly the P5 and the Security Council, we can chapter by chapter see exactly what the Secretary General can optimize.”

Sall also said he hopes Trump continues to have the United States at the forefront of the UN.

“President Trump, I think he can with our capacity, with the capacity of his colleagues, together—because we need to have this worldwide platform, universal platform, and we should be angry and he has to be here of course,” Sall said. “We have to take his concern because U.S. is the first country. So we have to listen to what the U.S. is telling, and we can work with open books and with clarity. I have no problem on that, and will work also with other countries to see how the UN can have also a predictable budget that has also a process to a country, and with accountability we can know exactly the money we spend and where it goes. Did we have the impact with the population in the world against hunger, against disease, against the war, and how to build the peace and development? I think President Trump should stay this leader. It is the way he will mark also not only United States but also the entire world.”