“Believe what they do, not what they say”: this is the advice given by sages everywhere. Still, we should listen to what, over the past 100 days, President-elect Donald Trump has said he will do in the next 100. For although he is a liar, his lies are so wholly comprehensive — so totalizing — that it seems as if reality, to him, comprises only what he says is real. In this way, Trump always means what he says.
The Star is afraid.
As he assumed the presidency again, Donald Trump proclaimed a “revolution of common sense” in his second Inaugural Address at the U.S. Capitol. Surrounded by the political elite and the captains of Silicon Valley, the new president pledged to restore faith in American institutions and championed a “manifest destiny into the stars,” with the United States expanding its territory and even planting a flag on Mars. The speech highlighted Trump’s many contrasts with his predecessors, even as it revealed how his political model has evolved.
President Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement on Monday shortly after his inauguration, echoing a similar decision in his first term that was later reversed by former President Biden.
The White House confirmed the withdrawal in a memo to Republican House members seen by The Hill, saying, “President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”
Pope Francis has said that Donald Trump’s plans to deport illegal migrants from the US would be a “disgrace” if they materialised.
Speaking to an Italian TV programme from his Vatican residence, Francis said that if the plans went ahead, Trump would make “poor wretches that don’t have anything foot the bill”.
“That’s not right. That’s not how you solve problems,” he said.
Papal Joe Biden?
WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump is planning to issue a broad memorandum Monday that directs federal agencies to study trade policies and evaluate U.S. trade relationships with China and America’s continental neighbors—but stops short of imposing new tariffs on his first day in office, as many trading partners feared.
The presidential memo directs federal agencies to investigate and remedy persistent trade deficits and address unfair trade and currency policies by other nations, two longstanding Trump irritants. And it singles out China, Canada and Mexico for scrutiny, directing agencies to assess Beijing’s compliance with its 2020 trade deal with the U.S., as well as the status of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, Trump’s updated North American Free Trade Agreement, which is set for review in 2026.
Former opponents of Trump are said to be begging to be part of his Make America Great Again crusade. It’s a turnaround from the chaos of 2016
The clock had just struck midnight at the pre-inauguration Crypto Ball in Washington DC, and recent converts to Trump’s new America — from California tech millionaires to influencers with glassy smiles and Barbie doll hair — were knocking back mezcal and dancing to 1990s rap. Snoop Dogg was on the decks.
In the lobby, Caroline Wren, a former Trump adviser, rolled her eyes at the latecomers to the Make America Great Again cause. Just a year ago, she said, most of the people here would never have supported the president-elect.
“Now they’re like begging. It’s like The Hunger Games to get in front of Donald Trump,” she said. “It’s hilarious.”
Voters have given Trump and his allies an opportunity to disrupt Washington’s status quo. For their sake, they better not blow it.
When Donald Trump swears at his second inauguration tomorrow to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” it will be more than a return to the presidency for a man who left office four years ago. It will also be a rebuke to his skeptics. Consider one such skeptic, who early in 2023 called Trump “an obstacle to the achievement” of progress on “the important issues he brought to or revived in the conservative mainstream,” and declared that “the future of conservatism — even (especially) a conservatism influenced by Trump’s presidency — now depends on rejecting Trump.”
President-elect Trump has set out an ambitious goal to enact 100 executive orders, according to reports — or, in some cases, less formal executive actions — in just his first day in office, which begins on Monday.
Dubbed by Team Trump as a “shock and awe” campaign, Trump’s executive orders and actions will reportedly range from the border and immigration to the economy and energy, as well as tackling cultural issues, so many, in fact, that he joked during the campaign that he wants a “tiny desk” at the Capitol, the site of the swearing in, where he can sit and sign orders.
In a few days we’ll experience an abrupt shift, a sharp inflection point, in human civilization’s trajectory. In the past such shifts – caused by events like wars, pandemics, economic depressions and technological breakthroughs – have almost always caught us unawares. What makes this coming shift exceptional is that we all know exactly when it will happen and exactly what will trigger it.
Following his inauguration at noon Eastern Standard Time on Jan. 20, the new President of the United States, Donald Trump, will review military troops from the Capitol’s East Front steps, lead the inaugural parade to the White House, and watch the proceedings from the presidential reviewing stand. He’ll then sign up to a hundred executive orders.
President-elect Donald Trump said he is moving his inauguration indoors Monday due to the freezing weather expected in Washington, D.C.
Trump said he’ll be sworn in and deliver his inauguration address inside the Capitol Rotunda.
“The various Dignitaries and Guests will be brought into the Capitol,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This will be a very beautiful experience for all, and especially for the large TV audience!”
Dan Bongino has been saying for weeks that the current Secret Service cannot be trusted to secure the inauguration and keep Trump safe if he’s exposed.
The inauguration and parade are now being moved inside.
Butler, PA Secret Service agent chosen as SS Director.
This is a…
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 17, 2025
h/t Mauser
Upon being nominated in 2021 to head Joe Biden’s Justice Department, Merrick Garland announced that the DOJ’s top priorities would be “ensuring racial equity” and “meeting the evolving threat of violent extremism.”
The U.S. had just lived through race riots, mass looting, and the largest annual homicide increase in the country’s history. Americans were getting robbed at gunpoint while eating in restaurants; thieves were smashing trucks and SUVs into storefronts to make off with merchandise, cash registers, and ATMs.
Kneeling in the driving seat of his family’s pickup truck, three-year-old Tap Fenster’s eyes barely reach over the steering wheel as he inches the vehicle slowly forwards through the snow.
TeJay, his father, stands on the back and distributes feed to the cattle following behind.
In the same pickup truck an hour earlier – under a blue sky in the icy cold of Nebraska’s Sandhills – Mr Fenster pulled over, grabbed his rifle and shot a coyote from 200 yards.
Following the announcement that the Village People would be performing at several upcoming inauguration events, what is it about their songs that appeals to the President-elect?
Village People’s YMCA is a high-energy disco hit that encourages young working-class men to meet like-minded individuals at Young Men’s Christian Association hostels. It’s been interpreted as an ode to the delights of picking up sexual partners at them – it appears on an album entitled Cruisin’ – and it was first performed by a group of chiselled dancers sporting moustaches and figure-hugging fancy dress costumes. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the song has been so closely associated with gay culture ever since its release in 1978. What is perhaps surprising is that it is now so closely associated with US President-elect Donald Trump.
The Trump dance never really ages. pic.twitter.com/yjAjpg8g53
— Meme Wars (@_MemeWars) January 9, 2025
Drug networks are too complex
Most residents in the town of Jerécuaro in Central Mexico were asleep when the car bomb exploded in the plaza at 5.10 am on 24 October, blowing out the windows of stores and scattering debris. But when a second car bomb went off over an hour later in the city of Acámbaro, 30 kilometres away, many residents were heading to work and school. The explosive device blew up outside a police station and injured three officers. Mexico’s recently sworn-in security minister, Omar García Harfuch, blamed the car bombs on the drug cartels fighting a turf war.
Car bombs are one of the many terrifying weapons in the arsenal of Mexico’s cartels as they battle over territory, not only to traffic and sell drugs, but to steal oil from pipelines, smuggle migrants over the US border, and extort businesses, among other crimes. They also wield weaponised drones that drop makeshift bombs unleashing shrapnel and nails. They lay landmines that kill soldiers in their Humvees as well as farmers. And they build fighting vehicles known as “monsters” that look like they are out of Mad Max, with walls of bullet-proof steel and battering rams.
The very things that makes the president-elect’s return so scary for many Europeans are what make him attractive to the rest of the world.
We are experiencing the biggest crisis in transatlantic relations since Suez. But it is unfolding in such a bizarre manner that nobody can quite get their head around it.
The richest man in the world, who is about to become a quasi-official in the incoming U.S. administration, has declared he’s trying to overthrow the British government — and probably the German one as well. President-elect Donald Trump himself has already indicated he wants to overturn every single tenet of the U.S.-led order. And his recent comments on the Panama Canal and Greenland show he’s even ready to question principles like territorial sovereignty and the inviolability of borders.
Euroweenies.
h/t DS
