Trump administration

The White House X account has won notoriety as a coven of young memesters scandalizing the nation. There have been meme images of leading Democrats decked out in sombreros, and clips featuring footage of Iranian military hardware being blown up interspersed with WiiSports.  Now the antics have been taken a step further. There is currently widespread talk of the United States “unleashing hell” on Iran once markets close this weekend, after its initial 15-point peace offer was rejected. There is even some frenzied speculation that things might go nuclear.  Not the best time then, to release a set of cryptic videos that seem to hint at some approaching cataclysm. One, at four seconds long, showed a pitch-black screen overlayed by TV static.

When you attend the court of King Donald, it’s important to genuflect. Unfamiliar foreigners in need of pointers can look to the man who is currently the most assiduous non-American flatterer: FIFA president Gianni Infantino. It’s only natural that, in the lead-up to this year’s soccer World Cup, the president of the global governing body of the sport should make regular visits to the host nation. Yet Infantino has gone above and beyond. He appears to have spent more time in Donald Trump’s orbit than some of the President’s cabinet secretaries. Infantino has been a willing accomplice in Trump’s campaign to secure the Nobel Peace Prize On paper, it would be easy to make the case that Infantino is a textbook globalist.

Donald Trump may have celebrated Team USA for winning the gold at the Olympics in hockey, but he was not in a puckish mood during his State of the Union speech. Instead, Trump stuck to his tried-and-true script of denouncing Democrats as “sick,” mocking concerns about affordability and cooing over Melania as a great new movie star. Far from nobody ever seeing anything like it, Trump delivered what everybody has already seen. Ever the salesman, he was not shy with the superlatives, declaring that America is the “hottest” country in the world – “bigger, better, richer, stronger than ever before.” If there was one thing that was longer than ever, it was Trump’s own address, which set a record length of 108 minutes.

As The Spectator goes to press, a great fleet of American war machines is whirring through the skies toward the Middle East. More than 50 fighter jets, plus stealth bombers and support aircraft, are joining what Donald Trump called an “armada” of US naval forces in the Arabian seas. The White House continues to say that it is pursuing a diplomatic solution with Iran. It’s possible that this latest military escalation is another of President Trump’s elaborate bluffs, designed to pressure the Iranian regime into accepting American and Israeli demands. But the President has been unusually mute about the situation on Truth Social.

Operation Absolute Resolve, Donald Trump’s rendition of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, was a brilliantly executed coup. The audacious raid did not undermine international law, as many European and Democratic politicians have said. But it did expose the weakness and pomposity of the world’s multilateral bodies. Maduro traded oil for loans with China while helping Moscow avoid sanctions. He permitted the terrorist group Hezbollah and Iran to operate and build drones within his jurisdiction. He rigged elections and had opposition activists shot in the street. He allowed and enabled weapons, fentanyl and illegal migrants to flood towards America’s southern border. Yet it wasn’t the International Criminal Court that arrested Maduro to bring him to justice in a New York court.

On New Year’s Eve a few years ago, I was in Medellín, Colombia, the city that gave its name to one of the world’s most notorious drugs cartels. Our taxi driver offered us some cocaine to fuel the party we were heading to: $10 for a gram; $15 for the “luxury” product. Our group decided to splash out and get a gram of the really good stuff. I’d tried coke a couple of times in London. It was like snorting drain cleaner. Whoosh… I found that half a line of Medellín’s best was enough to keep you going until sunrise. But the next day it was difficult to be within six feet of another human being, the coke having burned up all the dopamine in my brain. Coke is evil. I imagine a lot of other people were feeling the same in Medellín that New Year.

As a mighty US armada bobs in the Caribbean off the shores of Venezuela, President Trump just addressed the nation from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. With characteristic delicacy and understatement, he outlined the accomplishments of the first 11 months of his second term in office, lightly criticized his predecessor and cautiously opined about what the future held in store for the United States of America in the coming semiquincentennial year.  Well, some viewers may wish to dispute my emphases and assessments of tone. But let’s just say that the President’s short speech was vintage Trump. It was hyperbolic, yes, over the top, indubitably, but in essence 100 percent true.

As stock markets wobble over fears of AI hype and the overvaluation of tech shares, it seems an unfortunate time for Donald Trump to launch an initiative boosting America’s artificial intelligence capabilities. But the White House sees matters differently. Its new “Genesis Mission,” which commits government departments to make sure adequate energy and computing power are available, has been purposely launched to remind the world that AI is not all froth – or “slop” to use the popular term. Team Trump likens Genesis to the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb during World War Two faster than the other side. For all the typically Trumpian bombast, that’s not a foolish way of thinking about the subject.