As I write, Donald Trump has been in office for six weeks. Recently, he gave an extraordinary address to both Houses of Congress. It was basically a typical, 100-minute-long Trump rally speech. I’d be surprised if many people watched beyond the first 10 or 15 minutes, however significant his words might have been, as exhaustion and despair took their toll.
Since he returned to office, Trump has poured out daily executive orders which may have a drastic impact on US government, society, trade, foreign policy and the rule of law. Many of the orders are not within the remit of presidential powers, but such is their quantity, diversity and scope that the legislature has had very little opportunity to intervene.
“Tariff is a beautiful word”
Where is all of this intervention coming from? Some policy is Trump’s whim, or his particular perspective on economics and trade. He has imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and doubled to 20% tariffs on imports from China. He is threatening tariffs on imports from the EU and has suggested he may impose tariffs and all imports of certain supplies, such as steel.
All of the countries he has targeted have said they will reciprocate with tariffs on imports from the US. Trump has a degree in economics from Wharton Business School, but if he ever knew enough to graduate, he has forgotten what he learned in the decades since.
Project 2025
Many of Trump’s executive orders are composed by his staff to enact the policies and strategy detailed in the blueprint written by far-right politicians and activists, possibly at Trump’s behest. Many of the authors of Project 2025 are now appointed in his administration; it would be an astonishing coincidence if he’d read it, decided he liked it and picked out the authors for his cabinet. Project 2025 became publicly available before the election, but Trump claimed he was unaware of it.
The document is a blueprint for governing and turning the civil service into a MAGA-loyal organisation at root and branch level. (New directors have sent out all-staff emails telling staff they must inform the directorate if they suspect a colleague of dissent – shades of the Soviet regime.) Trump believes he was prevented from achieving his ambitions in his first presidency by a biased, anti-MAGA ‘deep state’ rather than prevented from taking damaging steps by professional administrators and advisers.
The impact of Project 2025 for the USA
Project 2025 will remove all the guardrails. For example, a budget approved by the House of Representatives could slash $880 billion from federal health and energy programmes over a decade. Some people view it as an attempt to create a one-party state. Whatever the outcome is, Trump and the GOP (the ‘Grand Old Party’, i.e. the Republicans) will own it.
Trump has called for investigations and dismissal or prosecution of any FBI officers and justice department lawyers who worked on any investigations of the 6 January insurrection, theft of classified documents or election interference cases. He has called for the death penalty for the murder of police officers, but has released on pardon all of the January 6 rioters who murdered police officers, including people convicted of planning armed insurrection. His new director of intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is a pro-Russian Putin sympathiser who supported Syria’s Bashar al-Assad before he was overthrown following the Russian withdrawal and fled to sanctuary in Moscow.
Turbulent international relations
Since Trump became president, he has offered to buy Greenland from Denmark, while threatening to take it by military force if they do not agree to the deal. He has insulted Canada by saying it should be an American state, and insulted its prime minister by referring to him as ‘governor’. More recently, Trump has threatened to exclude Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangement, and has ordered the UK to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine (an order it currently seems prepared to disregard).
Trump has shown little interest in Gaza, other than pressuring Egypt and Jordan to accept two million Palestinian refugees in order to depopulate the strip so it can be turned into a ‘riviera’ resort for Trump hotels and real estate. In the face of vehement objections from Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia and Qatar, he appears to have lost interest. He is, however, very keen on ending the war in Ukraine.
Support for Putin
The president had a 90-minute telephone call with Vladimir Putin, which Trump regarded a great success. The two leaders discussed their countries’ cooperation to defeat Hitler (who Trump also admires) and how they could cooperate in future. (No reference appears to have been made to the division of Germany, the Berlin blockade, and the annexation of Poland, over which the war began, but then many people who know Trump well doubt he has ever read a book, so he may not be aware of these less auspicious precedents.)
Trump discussed how Putin could be brought back into the international community, and the improvement of relations. He also began discussions about ending the war in Ukraine, which he believes could be done “very quickly”, probably because the “great negotiator” seems to have conceded to most of Putin’s wishes in advance. (Trump’s deal-making reputation owes much to his book, The Art of the Deal, but this was actually written by journalist Tony Schwartz, based on observation and interviews.)
Former White house adviser John Bolton has said that Putin has been able to poison Trump’s mind regarding Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He witnessed this in telephone conversations in Trumps first presidency. He believes Trump’s deal would be a surrender.
Is Trump a Russian asset?
Byline Times has reported a claim by a former senior Soviet KGB spy chief that Trump was recruited as a spy by Russian intelligence as early as 38 years ago, and given the codename ‘Krasnov’.
Russia’s Committee for State Security, abbreviated as KGB, was the main security agency of the Soviet Union between 1954 to 1991, responsible for internal security, foreign intelligence, counterintelligence and secret police functions.
In an extraordinary post on Facebook on 20 February, Alnur Mussayev – who used to run the successor to the Soviet-era KGB in Kazakhstan – claimed that he was personally aware of Trump’s recruitment by the agency in 1987.
Is Trump doing all this because he’s a Russian asset? Elon Musk’s Grok AI app seems to think it is likely:
“I estimate a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties … Assessing the likelihood that Donald Trump is a compromised asset of Vladimir Putin, based on publicly available information from 1980 onward, involves analyzing a complex web of financial ties, personal interactions, political behavior, and circumstantial evidence.
“This is not a definitive determination, but an estimation grounded in patterns and data accessible as of March 4, 2025. The question highlights Trump’s consistent reluctance to criticize Putin juxtaposed against his frequent attacks on U.S. allies, which is a key behavioral indicator to consider alongside historical and financial context.”
So, what is Trump?
Based on hundreds of hours of my reading and listening, including this portrait by The Atlantic journalist Dan P McAdams, he is regarded by many people who know him as amoral, a sociopath, vindictive (withdrawing the security normally provided to high-profile government figures who disagreed with him), vain, easily offended, avaricious, arrogant, and extremely angry much of the time. He also finds lies very easy to use, a function of actually pretending (acting), not just occasionally, but during most of his interactions with other people, whoever they are.
Trump is supported by Republican politicians who fear his wrath, because he and his supporters can end their careers. His Mafia-like hold over the party has reduced them to servility. They know the possible damage to the Republican Party, but they not only put party before country, they put their own careers before party and country. They own the potential for the destruction of the world order as we knew it. Every single one of them.
