Behind the bluster, President Donald Trump’s project to reshape the US moved ruthlessly ahead

The US president embraces controversy as he ‘floods the zone’ with initiatives that will change the face of the nation.

President Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Picture: Ting Shen/AFP

US President Donald Trump was in a reflective mood at the National Prayer Breakfast after a week in which his tariff wars with allies and “Riviera” plan for Gaza revived comparisons with the chaos of his first term.

“To get gravitas, you have to be controversial and in many cases, a horrible human being,” Trump mused at the Washington Hilton. “But we got rid of woke over the last two weeks. Woke is gonzo, despite the other side stealing hundreds of millions of dollars to promote woke.”

The threats to annex Canada, and the blithe disregard for Arab self-esteem with his Gaza proposal, were a reminder that Trump can be his own worst enemy as he brings his no-holds-barred approach to international diplomacy.

Trump said on Friday that he would announce his plan for “reciprocal trade” next week, placing partners on tenterhooks for potential tariffs including the UK, the EU and Japan, even as Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, met him for talks at the White House.

Trump indicated later at their press conference that he was no longer looking at blanket tariffs and would assess countries individually.

“We’re going to have tariffs, mostly reciprocal tariffs … where a country pays so much or charges us so much and we do the same,” he said. “They charge us, we charge them. It’s the same thing, and I seem to be going in that line as opposed to a flat-fee tariff.”

Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, with Trump on Friday. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Behind the bluster his project to reshape the US moved ruthlessly ahead, and for Americans the second term already seems different from the first.

Trump’s administration has “flooded the zone”, in the words of his former strategist Steve Bannon, making it difficult to respond clearly through a deluge of executive orders, intensive audits of government departments and agencies, left-field cabinet appointments, a publicity barrage led by Elon Musk on X and the distraction of Trump’s own freewheeling rhetoric.

But at root this was the week when woke died.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, was caught bulging her eyes in a state of apparent shock at his Gaza ideas.

Susie Wiles, right, reacts with Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, as the president suggests the US take over the Gaza Strip. Picture: Shawn Thew/EPA/The Times

She has resolved to “let Trump be Trump” and manage what she can control, leading to the image that Wiles wanted to symbolise the week – Trump surrounded by young female athletes as he signed an executive order to end “biological men” competing in women’s sports.

“The war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared, adding that his administration would block visas to transgender women for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

Across the government dozens if not hundreds of staff involved in delivering diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have been laid off.

This began after Trump’s order Terminating Illegal Discrimination in the Federal Government, which rescinded Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 directive forbidding employment discrimination on the basis of race, colour and religion and requiring affirmative action.

Trump’s recalibration extended to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) which had its budget frozen, overseas workers recalled and an announcement that all but 611 of the more than 10,000 staff and contractors would have their jobs terminated.

The crusade against so-called wokeism was at the heart of this evisceration of an agency created by President Kennedy in 1961 as his namesake, Senator John Kennedy, of Louisiana, spelt out while defending Musk’s department of government efficiency (DOGE).

“He found that we gave $US2 million for sex changes in Guatemala,” Kennedy told Congress. “He found that we gave $US20 million to produce a new Sesame Street show in Iraq … You think most taxpayers would support that?”

On Friday Trump said paper drinking straws would be replaced for plastic, while the war on woke showed signs of spreading.

The NFL replaced the words “End Racism” in the Super Bowl endzone with “Choose Love”; Accenture joined Meta, Alphabet and Amazon in phasing out diversity goals; and the University of North Carolina suspended a DEI course taken by all students, saying it “jeopardised $US1.4 billion in critical federal research funding”.

Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard are on track for confirmation. Picture composite: The Times

This was the week when Senate committees cleared the vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary and NATO-sceptic Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence.

Trump’s scorecard depends on which constituency you ask.

“When he does stuff and it looks a little chaotic, it’s not. It’s genius,” said Peter Navarro, a White House adviser for trade.

By contrast Steven Greene, professor of political science at North Carolina State University, said: “The tariffs are a good reminder that this is not the work of a genius. Trump is very much a muddling-through character, [but] he has empowered Elon Musk and others who have more systematic designs.”

The Times