The first month of Donald Trump as President of United States
January 20, 2025, inaugurated as 47th president.
Week 1
- Formally pardens around 1,500 defendents criminally changed with involvement of the 2021 Capitol attack
- Signs 26 executive orders repealing Biden era’s directives expanding border enforcement reversing climate iniatives, renaming Gulf of Mexico Gulf of America
- orders the closure of all federal DEI offices, with existing employees placed on indefinite leave and special orders to prevent them from being protected through reclassification or deceptive wording.
- revokes an executive order on AI safety initially signed by former President Biden. Biden’s order, introduced in 2023, aimed to establish safeguards for the rapidly advancing AI technology.
Week 2
- Executive order that seeks to end “chemical and surgical mutilation”, referring to “the use of puberty blockers and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex.
- Tarriffs – the most beautiful word – confirmed that 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on imports from China beginning February 1 with no stated exemptions. Later Canada reached an agreement to delay the tariffs in exchange for tougher boarders. 25% tariff on all foreign imports of steel and aluminum to the United States
Third week of Donald Trump’s second term
- The real estate CEO this week took Gaza as a project. We’ll turn it into the riviera. President Trump called for the permanent removal of Palestinian citizens from the Gaza Strip.
- US Vice-President JD Vance launched a scalding attack on European democracies, saying the greatest threat facing the continent was not from Russia and China, but “from within”. Vance repeated the Trump administration’s line that Europe must “step up in a big way to provide for its own defence”. He alleged European Union “commissars” were suppressing free speech, blamed the continent for mass migration, and accused its leaders of retreating from “some of its most fundamental values”. Not a speech but a condescending lecture about tenants of democracy.
- Sent first plane of deportees to Guantanamo. The US sent the first group of migrants to Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday, after Trump announced plans to expand migrant detention at the US Navy base in Cuba.
- Removed climate change mentions from government websites. Starting last week, the Trump administration reportedly ordered some US government agency websites to remove references to climate change.
- 17 Trump Events of Week 3
Week 4
- Musk and Trump: Increased access for Musk’s Doge. Trump directed Musk’s Doge, a cost-cutting initiative to shrink the federal government, to “check out” spending at the defence department among other agencies. “Pentagon, education, just about everything,” access to a US treasury department payments system that controls the flow of trillions of dollars in funds every year,
Week 5
- Ukraine: President Trump holds a bilateral meeting and joint press conference with French President Macron
Week 6
- Andrew and Tristan Tate, (charged with crimes related to human trafficking and organised crime in Romania), have left for the United States speculation is rife that the travel ban was lifted due to intense pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration. The siblings also face sexual offence charges in the United Kingdom.
Law and Trump and Musk (Unknown source)
Trump and Musk have a few big things in common. They both had cold, mean fathers who didn’t love them and hammered into them that they were inadequate. Both of them are deeply racist. And both have barreled through life ignoring laws and norms, and using the legal system as a weapon. They just do whatever they want and pay any fines or judgements that might ultimately be levied against them. Before the 2016 election, USAToday, calculated that Trump had been a party to at least 3500 lawsuits or other legal actions.
Musk, too, routinely ignores the law, whether it’s SEC rules, COVID restrictions, employment agreements, or any number of other things. Like Trump, he files frivolous suits to beat down people. They never face any serious consequences. (The most extreme example, of course, is Trump getting away with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his refusal to return dozens of boxes of stolen, highly classified documents. The Supreme Court itself protected him from the former, and a judge he appointed protected him from the latter.)
Musk (like his buddies Peter Thiel and David Sacks) is the product of South African apartheid. He grew up with a world view that things should be run by a small minority of superior people. In his world, democracy was dangerous because it empowered the lesser people. He witnessed that world fall to democratic majority rule. He has an Ayn Rand view of the world where it should be run by a few Great Men and everyone else should get out of the way. Governments, especially democratic governments, get in the way. They are an evil force that empowers the lesser people and shackles the Great Men.
The Moral Maze Radio 4
To his followers, Trump is an important disrupter who is shaking America and the West out of its complacency. Ending the war is the moral priority, and if peace comes at the cost of land, that’s a deal worth doing.
I was impressed with Jan Halper-Hayes, who, albeit a republican, argued the most coherantly, listened and anwered the most honestly. Take Putin, and ask what was legal what was moral what was strategic? Legal clearly violated international law. Strategic – first ask who poked the bear? Peter Hitchens point. Dangling the positivity of Ukraine becoming part of Nato was against what was agreed (Baker said we will not move one inch eastwards). Morally – Trump feels he is doing the right thing for his citizens.
Take the moral judgement out of it. Trump does 4 things. 1. Pre-emptive framing. 2 trial balloon, floats the idea and see’s how it is received. 3 distraction and 4. deflection. He had a plan to get Netanyahu to stop military action, he began with the framing, then the ballon… He throws out ideas. He is a man of action. Build a wall. We are giving the government back to the people.
Trump is against war. The emperor has no clothes. What if this action bought and end to the war, lives were saved. The transactional is the moral with Trump.
Searching the Rule of Law, I find this:
President Donald Trump offered up a quotation of his own: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Apparently originating with Napoleon Bonaparte, Trump here is brashly embracing the idea of personalistic rule. Just weeks into his second administration, the returning president has made clear that he believes rule-following is a sucker’s game in a town where the rules have been set by corrupted interests. With truly astonishing frankness, he is willing to raise the question of whether law is unable to offer the American people the government they deserve, making a resort to personal rule strictly necessary. If America’s basic commitment to the rule of law is to survive Trump’s challenge to it, it is going to need defenders in many quarters, some of which would be quite unexpected sources of “resistance.”
John Locke
Kalikellett 