Freddy Gray

You’re not fired! One of the defining aspects of the second Trump administration so far has been the unwillingness of the Commander-in-Chief to oust senior officials who generate unwanted headlines. "Never bend, never break" is the mantra, and that means always refusing to dance to the media’s tune. War Secretary Pete Hegseth, as Americano readers will know, has survived various painful episodes, partly because Donald Trump enjoys him not backing down.In recent days, at least three significant Trumpworld figures have been embarrassed in ways which would, under any other president, have cost them their jobs.

Donald Trump spent much of the second half of last year boasting about the total and utter success of his military strikes on Iran. “As you know,” he said in August, “we took out the nuclear capability of Iran, and to use the term that people try to dispute without any knowledge, it was obliterated.” Iran’s nuclear program, he assured the world, had been set back by “decades.” Yet yesterday, just six months on, there he was again – meeting Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu once more to discuss the urgent need to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Political candidates aren’t people these days so much as brand logos for the business of politics. Their stock – the ticker tape of their approval – goes up or down, but after any politician has reached a certain level of mass recognition, their name and face hold value. It doesn’t matter, necessarily, if most voters think they’re a joke. Their image can drive media engagement just as their donor files and old campaign data can be profitably mined. Kamala Harris is a perfect example. She was, all but her most stubborn supporters agree, a disastrous presidential nominee.

The news broke this morning that Donald Trump has, after considerable deliberation, settled on Kevin Warsh as his nominee to replace Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve. "I have known Kevin for a long period of time," said Trump, on Truth Social. "There’s no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best." "On top of everything else," added the Commander-in-Chief, "he is 'central casting' and he will never let you down." The use of the phrase "central casting" shows Trump’s reality TV brain at work. The President likes people in major government positions who look the part on screen. Inevitably, senior Democrats are attacking Warsh’s nomination as Trump’s "latest attempt to seize control of the Fed.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has become horribly over-diagnosed. Now, anyone who expresses doubts about his wondrous abilities – or just fails to repeat the White House’s preferred talking points – risks being branded a "TDS" sufferer. It’s boring. Still, there remains a large faction of elite journalists, social-media influencers and political actors who loathe Donald Trump with a pathological intensity and who feel their mission in life must be to undermine him by whatever means necessary. They have spent the last decade condemning Trump and his supporters as conspiracy loons even as they leap from one dark theory to the next – Trump is a Russian asset! A closet Nazi! An Al Capone-style mobster! A serial rapist and possibly even a pedophile!

"Better late than never." That’s how Reform party leader Nigel Farage has described Donald Trump’s sudden and dramatic repudiation of the United Kingdom’s Chagos handover. "This should be enough to sink just about the worst deal in history." Early this morning, Trump used his Truth Social account to lay into "our 'brilliant' NATO ally, the United Kingdom, over Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to "give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital military base, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.

During his visit to Washington, DC on Wednesday, the Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said that he had a ‘frank but also constructive’ discussion with Vice President J.D. Vance. He added, however, that the Kingdom of Denmark and the US remained in ‘fundamental disagreement’ about the future security of Greenland. Well, in typically explosive style, Donald Trump has just emphasised how deep that disagreement is. On Truth Social, he has announced that, starting on February 1, his administration will impose 10 per cent tariffs on all goods sent to the United States from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the United Kingdom.