Mick Clifford: From pardons to trade wars, Trump’s first 20 days signal a wild presidency
Donald Trump is 20 days in office as US president an appropriate landmark from which to examine how he has started and what it says about how he means to go on.
Donald Trump is 20 days in office as US president. There is a long tradition of mapping out, and subsequently evaluating a president’s first 100 days.
However, Trump has started at the speed of light, initiating a whole range of measures that have caused upheaval, fear, and among his supporters, delight.
So perhaps 20 days is a more appropriate landmark from which to examine how he has started and what it says about how he means to go on.
What follows are 20 of the orders, dictates, comments, tomfoolery, and completely bonkers measures he has engaged in since being sworn in.
On Tuesday, during a press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Natanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, Trump said the US would clear out Gaza and redevelop it as a “Riviera in the Middle East”.
This would involve expelling nearly 2m Palestinians from their homeland.
“Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land,” he told reporters.
“Developing and creating thousands of jobs with something like that will be magnificent.”
He kept a straight face as he said it, but Natanyahu found it hard to quell his excitement at the fantasy of it all.
Following the air disaster in Washington DC on January 29, Trump blamed the crash, in which 67 people died, on Democrats and diversity equality and inclusion employment policies.
The implication was that the federal aviation authority, or the armed forces, had employed people who were not optimum and so accidents were inevitable.
When asked by a reporter how he could portion blame in such a manner without any evidence, he replied: “Because I have common sense.”
Trump and his confederate Elon Musk announced on Monday that the US’s largest overseas aid body, USAID, would shut.
The organisation has 10,000 employees and a budget of $40bn (€38.5bn) annually.
It provides assistance to the most vulnerable, particularly children through supplying vaccines and nutrition.
Musk called USAID “evil”.
Trump said it was run by “radical left lunatics” and was getting away with “tremendous fraud”.
He gave no details, no evidence, no example of fraud or the political allegiances of those who run the agency.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper,” Musk tweeted last Monday.
One US columnist described the story as one of the richest man on the planet versus the poorest children on the planet.
On Sunday, Trump initiated widespread tariffs of 20% on goods imported to the US from Mexico and Canada.
On Monday, he put a pause on the tariffs after the said he was initiating “the dumbest trade war in history” and the stock market got the heebee geebies.
He also initiated tariffs on China and the Chinese are responding. Trump thinks tariffs are “beautiful”.
Soon after his inauguration on January 20, Trump pardoned all those convicted of offences related to the attempt to effect a coup d’etat on January 6, 2021.
A total of 1,583 people were arrested following the violence which resulted in five related deaths, hundreds injured, and a shock to a country steeped in the peaceful transfer of power.
Around 250 were still serving prison sentences when Trump ordered they be set free.
Previously, he had called some of these people “patriots”.
Seventy-two hours after taking office, Trump removed the security detail for his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former officials in his last administration, John Bolton and Brian Hook.
All are believed to be under threat from the Iranians over their work for the US.
He also removed the security detail for pandemic expert Anthony Fauci, who has received death threats.
Between them, these individuals have given accounts of Trump in office that makes him look like a dangerous buffoon.
Now that he has his toy back, he wants to use it as a weapon.
Trump has stated that he has plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
This is one of those little things that children sometimes get het up over, but there is no record of any senior adult politician ever acting in this manner.
Five days after inauguration, Trump reasserted his love of Greenland and its people and their desire to be his subjects.
“I think the people want to be with us,” Trump said.
“I don’t really know what claim Denmark has to it, but it would be a very unfriendly act if they didn’t allow that to happen because it’s for the protection of the free world,” he added.
On his first week in office, Trump froze all federal loans, grants, and other financial assistance, impacting millions of Americans, mostly those who require state assistance.
Last Monday, a judge in Washington ruled that the memo outlining the freeze was “potentially catastrophic” and that Trump had possibly acted beyond his powers.
On February 3, the government revoked the temporary protected status for 350,000 Venezuelans who are in the US because of political upheaval at home which has left many in danger of death or imprisonment.
Venezuelan activist Beatriz Olavarria told NBC that for some, “returning would be almost suicidal”.
For Trump, it’s another nice, neat example or headline for his base on how he is cracking down on immigration.
On the day after his inauguration, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord.
He doesn’t believe in climate change and has expressed in the past the idea that it is a fraud designed to persecute America.
One of his first executive orders was to open up Alaska for energy exploration.
He used the phrase ‘drill, baby, drill’ in his inauguration speech but the order, and the sentiment, is unlikely to make any impact on energy prices.
But, as with practically everything Trump does, it’s good for marketing his brand, for selling, for making it all about himself.
Among his first flurry of executive orders was “Ending the weaponisation of the Federal Government.”
The order states as a fact that the government, and particularly the justice department, was politicised and used to hound opponents — guess who — by the last administration.
This order instructs employees to find people to blame for this criminality.
There is absolutely no evidence of any of this stuff, but hey, who’s listening to the caveats.
Here’s another executive order issued on the big day that he was sworn in.
“Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information”.
This is designed to root out those who interfered in the 2020 election to rob it from Trump.
He continues to claim he won in 2020 and a lot of people believe him irrespective of any facts.
Trump has withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization, just as he did first time around.
The WHO was crucial in tackling the coronavirus, but Trump, who almost died from the condition, suggested that it could be defeated by swallowing detergent.
Hegseth’s qualification to run the biggest military machine in the world is that he was a presenter on Trump’s favourite TV channel, Fox News.
By the end of Trump’s third week in office, Robert F Kennedy Jr should be confirmed as the new secretary for health.
“As the mother of a child I want an education system that helps my child read and write, teaches him maths, nothing else in the classroom and the president is wholeheartedly committed to make academia great again in this country.”
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