Donald Trump appears to have been left a changed man after his two brushes with death this year at the hands of would-be assassins.
‘Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore our country to greatness,’ he solemnly intoned yesterday.
But just how will he achieve this ambitious goal?
The president-elect has made more than 40 distinct promises on what he’d get done just on Day One of his new administration, on themes ranging from slashing government spending to transgender issues, and education to energy and immigration.
So what will the notoriously unpredictable Trump prioritise?
Donald Trump points his finger following early results from the 2024 US presidential election in Palm Beach County Convention Centre on Wednesday
Mass migrant deportations
Trump has pledged to close the US-Mexico border on the first day of his presidency, before carrying out a round-up and deportation of migrants who entered the country illegally.
He has said he could use the military to do this, and he’s separately pledged that any migrants who kill American citizens will face the death penalty.
Migrants who crossed into the US from Mexico pass under concertina wire along the Rio Grande river
Critics say he hasn’t made clear whether he intends to include all 13 million suspected illegal migrants or simply the criminal ones, and warn that deporting the former would be legally and logistically impossible – even if polls show many Americans support it.
The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, says that – at an estimated $968billion – it would also be prohibitively expensive.
America First foreign policy
His mantra that American interests must always determine US policy is hardly good news for other countries – including Britain. Trump has complained for years about allies freeloading off US military spending and has threatened to pull his country out of Nato, which would be disastrous.
In line with his determination to end US involvement with overseas conflicts, Trump – who rarely misses a chance to praise Vladimir Putin – has claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in just a day, reportedly by forcing President Zelensky to accept terms favourable to Russia.
Experts fear that deserting Ukraine and imposing crippling tariffs on China could prompt Beijing to invade Taiwan, a US ally.
Putin has no immediate plans to congratulate Trump on his victory, according to the Kremlin (pictured: The pair at the G20 summit in June 2019)
Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping during the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan on June 29, 2019
Conspiracist health tsar
Trump’s mooted picks to help him achieve his ambitions in the Oval Office don’t come more bizarre than his pledge to reward Robert F Kennedy Jr for ending his own independent bid for the presidency last month by installing him in a key health role.
‘Bobby’s gonna pretty much do what he wants. I want him to do something important for our country. It makes people healthier,’ said Trump this week.
Bobby, a nephew of ex-president John F Kennedy and a former heroin addict, wants to remove fluoride from drinking water, calling it an ‘industrial waste’ linked to cancer, arthritis, thyroid disease and IQ loss. He also believes other health-related conspiracy theories, notably that childhood vaccines cause conditions such as autism. He’s described vaccinations as a ‘holocaust’.
Staying out of jail
There is a very personal reason for Trump wanting to become president – he’s a convicted felon who is desperate to avoid going to prison. His best chance of doing that was winning another White House term just before he was due to be sentenced later this month for 34 felony convictions related to falsifying business records over paying Stormy Daniels hush money shortly before the 2016 election. He also faces three other criminal trials, in which he denies wrongdoing.
Now he could attempt to pardon himself, a process that legal experts say is technically possible – not least because six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Republican nominees. Trump’s election victory, said a former New York prosecutor, is his ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’.
Trump’s cases brought by Jack Smith are set to be closed before he enters the White House
$2trillion budget cut
Economists agree the US needs to tackle its daunting $35trillion national debt and Trump is expected to put the job in the hands of two billionaires – Tesla founder and X/Twitter owner Elon Musk and Wall Street hedge fund manager John Paulson, tipped to become his Treasury Secretary.
Trump has pledged to make Musk, who spent more than $132million on his election campaign, the head of a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’.
Musk has claimed he could cut at least $2trillion from the government’s annual spending (which was more than $6 trillion in 2023) but gave no details of how.
Financial analysts have claimed the scope of Musk’s planned cuts is deranged, with one describing them as ‘crazy, nuts proposals’.
Civil service slashed
Trump has pledged to slash America’s total of two million civil servants, whom he claims are ‘destroying this country’ and are ‘crooked’ and ‘dishonest’. Presidents usually leave career civil servants alone but Trump plans to reintroduce an executive order called ‘Schedule F’ that would empower him to sack 50,000 and replace them with loyal conservatives.
Opponents claim crucial areas such as food and workplace safety, and clean air and water, would be jeopardised by unqualified people taking over supervisory roles.
Trump is also determined to interfere heavily in education. He’s vowed to cut federal funding of schools that teach subjects he doesn’t like such as sex education, which he regards as fuelling ‘transgender insanity’.
Trump’s re-election will have implications affecting China, Taiwan, Russia and Ukraine
Trade tariffs war
In what critics say would be a disastrous policy for the US, because it would push up prices and increase inflation, Trump has said he wants to impose a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods and as much as a 20 per cent tariff on goods from all other countries – in all, some $3trillion of annual imports to the US.
Trump, who’s boasted that ‘trade wars are good’, claims this will protect American jobs, but this confrontational approach is likely to backfire badly.
Other countries would respond with tariffs of their own and it’s forecast that the resulting trade war could lower UK growth by 0.7 per cent and 0.5 per cent in the first two years.