At the end of the last Trump presidency, the New York Times declared: “The terrible experiment is over – President Donald J Trump: The End.”
That didn’t age well. If Trump 1.0 (2016-2020) was the experiment, then maybe Trump 2.0 (2024-2028) will be the real deal.
In 2016, Donald Trump was a political novice. That was the attraction for those who chose him. He didn’t know how Washington worked, and he didn’t know how to govern. But he learned on the job as he meandered chaotically through that first term.
With Apprentice precision, he fired those who crossed him. They were largely people drawn from the establishment and in the end, that was their downfall.
This time, Trump watchers here in Washington believe he will be more organised. He will know who to hire. They will be loyalists – the people he’s eyed up and got to know over the past eight years.
The first appointment has already come.
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Susie Wiles will be his White House chief of staff. She is the veteran political consultant who ran his winning campaign. In his shadow for many years, she is an astute political operator whose career began as a junior staffer on Ronald Reagan’s election campaign.
She had the Apprentice treatment once – fired by Mr Trump in 2020 in the run-up to that presidential election after a falling out. But he soon saw her value again. He trusts her and she knows precisely how he ticks.
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Mr Trump knows Ms Wiles better than any of the four chiefs of staff he hired during his first term, and crucially she is credited for trying to keep his campaign disciplined. She may be a guardrail in the next White House.
Her appointment is an indication of what his other appointments will look like. They will be people well-known to him or they will be fully signed up surrogates like Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Expect family members to be signed up too. Last time his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner were key figures.
For good or bad, and with little experience, Mr Kushner played a central role in moulding Mr Trump’s Middle East policy which culminated with the historic Abraham Accords.
And so the first difference between Trump 1.0 and 2.0 will be the hires. The second will be the power he has.
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2:56
Who will make Team Trump?
The landslide victory and likely control of both Houses of Congress gives Mr Trump a powerful mandate to govern. It also gives him a huge confidence in his conviction to do what he wants to do.
A far-reaching agenda is now much more achievable than it was in his last term. He also has a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve.
His manifesto, which has always been a little opaque and subject to change, is likely to include scrapping the department of education and making education a state, not federal, issue.
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It would include a pledge for “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants, tax cuts, the imposition of tariffs on foreign goods and an overhaul of the mechanics of the federal government.
On that last pledge he hopes to reintroduce a plan, unimplemented in his first term, called Schedule F which would see the removal of thousands of non-partisan federal civil servants and replacing them with loyal political appointees.
Some of his policies would require the approval of Congress, which is easier if the Republicans hold control in both Houses.
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Other policies could be implemented via presidential executive orders.
This privilege gives the American president broad executive and enforcement authority to use their discretion to determine how to enforce the law or manage the resources and staff of the executive branch of government.
A few months ago, I had lunch with a top Trump advisor who told me that if re-elected, Mr Trump would sign a pile of executive orders on inauguration day. Only half joking, the official said the president would take the pile to the inauguration ceremony and sign them there and then. Quite the image.
Above all, governance is about confidence. In 2016, Mr Trump didn’t have that confidence. You could see it was missing on his face when outgoing President Obama welcomed him to the White House for transition talks.
Image: Trump meeting with then-president Barack Obama in the Oval Office after his 2016 win. Pic: Reuters
This time, Mr Trump has supreme confidence because he just pulled off the most remarkable comeback in political history.
Donald Trump said he plans to double tariffs on steel imports from next week, deepening his trade war which has hit global markets.
The US president told a rally of steel workers in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, on Friday that tariffswould be raised from 25% to 50%, “which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States”.
Mr Trump later said on Truth Social that the new levy – also affecting aluminium imports – would be in effect from Wednesday and that American “industries are coming back like never before”.
“This will be yet another BIG jolt of great news for our wonderful steel and aluminum (sic) workers,” he added. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
He then said: “We don’t want America’s future to be built with shoddy steel from Shanghai – we want it built with the strength and the pride of Pittsburgh!”
Image: The new levy will come into effect on Wednesday, the US president says. Pic: Reuters
Sky News understands that British steel exports are exempt from this rise after a UK-US trade agreementwas signed earlier this month.
The agreement said at the time that the US “will promptly construct a quota at most favoured nation (MFN) rates” for British steel, aluminium and derivative products.
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2:45
How good is the UK-US deal?
Earlier, the US president claimed China had “totally violated” an agreement to mutually roll back tariffs and trade restrictions for critical minerals.
“So much for being Mr Nice Guy,” he said in a post on his social media platform.
The rates threaten to make the cost of products using steel and aluminium – such as cars or soft drink cans – more expensive for Americans.
He also previously threatened Canada with 50% levies on imports, while the provincial government of Ontario, in turn, threatened to charge 25% more for the electricity it supplies to the US.
Canada’smost populous province provides electricity to more than 1.5 million American homes and businesses in Minnesota, New York and Michigan.
At the time, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the proposed 50% tariffs an “attack” on Canadian workers, families and businesses.
There was one on whether the president had any marital advice for his French counterpart – who appeared to be shoved by his wife the other day.
Another was about whether Mr Musk thought it was harder to colonise to Mars or reform government.
There were one or two about the pressing issues of the day, like Gaza, but nothing that could be described as probing or doing what we are supposed to be there to do – hold power to account.
And Musk, under Trump, has without question wielded immense power over the past few months; unprecedented for an unelected official.
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0:53
From February: Elon Musk shows off ‘chainsaw for bureaucracy’
There is little debate in America about the need to cut government bureaucracy or cut the debt.
America, more than any country I have lived in, is a place full of bloat and waste. Yet it was Mr Musk’s methods which caused so much unease among his many critics.
They argued that where a scalpel was definitely needed, Musk instead deployed a sledgehammer.
At times, his flamboyant style was a neat distraction from the substance of Trump’s sweeping policy changes.
But none of that was interrogated in this ‘press conference’.
Instead, the inane questions went on.
Image: Pic: Reuters
Trump was asked if he would pardon Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs should he be convicted – he didn’t say ‘no’, but there was no follow up to examine why.
There was a moment when irony appeared to have died altogether.
In the same breath as trumpeting his success in cutting government waste – when he has, in fact, achieved a fraction of the $2 trillion savings he promised – Musk congratulated Trump for deploying so much gold around the Oval Office.
The presidential office has had an extensive, gaudy gold makeover costing undisclosed sums.
Image: Pic: Reuters
One reporter did ask about Musk’s alleged drug use. But by attributing the story to the New York Times – who have made the allegations – Musk had an easy out.
“Why believe that fake news,” he essentially said.
Surely the obvious question was “Mr Musk, when was the last time you took ketamine or ecstasy?”
Elon Musk has formally left his role in Donald Trump’s administration.
Mr Musk sported a black eye at a press conference with Mr Trump in which the president confirmed the tech billionaire’s expected departure on Friday.
The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X said his five-year-old son X Æ A-12, or X for short, was responsible for the bruising.
“I was horsing around with my son… I said ‘go ahead and punch me in the face’, and he did,” Mr Musk told reporters in the Oval Office.
“It turns out a five-year-old can punch, actually. I didn’t really feel much at the time.”
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0:42
Musk sported a black eye
At the press conference, Mr Trump thanked Mr Musk “for his incredible service” with his work for his help setting up and running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and suggested he would continue to be “back and forth”.
The US president handed Mr Musk a golden key in a White House-branded box, which he described as a “special present”.
“Elon gave an incredible service. [There is] nobody like him. And he had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he is an incredible patriot,” Mr Trump said.
“Some of the media organisations in this room are the slingers,” Mr Musk said when asked about the “slings and arrows” in an apparent dig at The New York Times.
The US president praised Mr Musk as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced”, commending him for “stepping forward to put his talents into our nation” by leading DOGE.
Meanwhile, Mr Musk, who was wearing a DOGE-branded baseball cap and a T-shirt with “The Dogefather” written on it, said it was “not the end of DOGE, but the beginning” and that the DOGE team would “only grow stronger”.
The 53-year-old added that he would continue to visit the White House and would still be an adviser to Mr Trump.
Image: Mr Musk wore a T-shirt with “The Dogefather” written on it. Pic: Reuters
During the press conference, Mr Trump also turned to various conflicts around the globe, telling reporters that Israel and Hamas are “very close to an agreement” for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The president said an agreement with Iran to stop it from developing nuclear weapons was also “very close”.
Meanwhile, following recent tensions between India and Pakistan, Mr Trump took credit for de-escalating the situation between the two countries.
The US president had handed Mr Musk the task of cutting government spending by sacking federal workers and eliminating bureaucratic waste as head of the newly formed DOGE department.
Despite promising to save taxpayers as much as $2trn (£1.5trn), DOGE currently estimates its efforts have saved $175bn (£130bn).
Mr Musk claimed the savings could be even higher, saying in the Oval Office on Friday: “We do expect over time a trillion dollars in savings. Say by the middle of next year, with presidential support, we can do it.”
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0:53
The moment took place before his interview with Rob Schmitt in front of the Republican crowd.
Mr Trump read out a list of savings DOGE has allegedly made, including cutting $101m spent on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies in the Department of Education, $59m on hotel rooms for migrants in New York, $42m on a project for social and behavioural change in Uganda, £24m “for an Arab Sesame Street” and $8m “for making mice transgender”.
But questions have been raised about whether the department has actually saved taxpayers as much money as suggested.
He claimed DOGE had been blamed for cuts that had nothing to do with his department.
Image: Elon Musk carries X Æ A-12 on his shoulders in the Oval Office. File pic: Reuters
“What we found was happening was if there were any cuts anywhere, people would assume that was done by DOGE,” he explained.
“We essentially became the ‘DOGE’ boogie man.”
It comes after Mr Musk’s father, Errol Musk, speaking to Gillian Joseph on The World earlier this week, insisted there had been “no rift between Elon and Donald Trump”.
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4:29
Errol Musk says his son isn’t a very good politician
As a “special government employee”, US law allowed Mr Musk to serve for 130 days, which would have ended around Friday.
He announced he was leaving in a post on X,in which he said: “I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”