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      Donald Trump lands in Saudi Arabia as Gulf visit to seek economic deals begins – US politics live

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      US President Donald Trump has arrived in Saudi Arabia to kick off a four-day tour through the Gulf region, focusing on economic deals rather than the security crises ranging from war in Gaza to the threat of escalation over Iran’s nuclear programme.Tesla CEO and Trump adviser Elon Musk, as well as business leaders including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser are travelling with the president.Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth are also among those on the trip.Trump will first visit Riyadh, site of a Saudi-US Investment Forum, heading to Qatar on Wednesday and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday.During the Riyadh stop, Trump is expected to offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth well over $100 billion, sources told Reuters, which could include a range of advanced weapons, including C-130 transport aircraft.In other developments:

      Trump has pushed back on criticism for accepting the gift of a $400m (£303m) plane from Qatar’s royal family to replace Air Force One. He claimed it would be “stupid” not to accept the gift. He has said it is “a very public and transparent transaction”.
      Footage shows President Trump speaking with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Royal Court’s blue room, where he is meeting and greeting officials.President Trump has just arrived at the Royal Court in Riyadh.More on what we could expect from Trump’s tour of the Middle East.The US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are expected to announce investments that could run into the trillions, Reuters reports.Saudi Arabia already committed in January to $600bn in investments in the US over the next four years, but Trump has said he will ask for a full trillion.Trump is expected to offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth more than $100bn, sources told Reuters.Reuters has been reporting from the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh.It said the event began with a video showing soaring eagles and falcons, celebrating the long history between the United States and the kingdom.Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, Stephen A Schwartzman, CEO of Blackstone, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al Jadaan and Khalid were all present.Speaking at a forum panel, Fink said he had visited Saudi Arabia more than 65 times over 20 years. He said the kingdom had been a follower when he first started visiting but was now “taking control” and broadening its economy out of its oil base.Top Democrats in the US Senate are pushing for a vote on the floor of the chamber censuring Donald Trump’s reported plan to accept a $400m luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One and later as a fixture in the Trump’s personal presidential library.Four Democratic members of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Monday that they would press for a vote later this week. They said that elected officials, including the president, were not allowed to accept large gifts from foreign governments unless authorised to do so by Congress.Cory Booker from New Jersey, Brian Schatz from Hawaii, Chris Coons from Delaware and Chris Murphy from Connecticut cast the reported gift of the Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a clear conflict of interest and a serious threat to national security.“Air Force Once is more than just a plane – it’s a symbol of the presidency and of the United States itself,” the senators said in a joint statement. “No one should use public service for personal gain through foreign gifts.”News of a possible gift of the luxury jet prompted immediate scathing criticism from senior Democrats. Though the Qatari government has stressed that no final decision has yet been made, Trump appeared to confirm it on Sunday when he commented on social media that the transfer was being made “in a very public and transparent transaction”.Read the full report here:President Trump was joined by US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.US President Donald Trump is also expected to be feted by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a formal dinner and a gathering of members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, later on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.President Trump spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a coffee ceremony at the Royal Terminal of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.US President Donald Trump has arrived in Saudi Arabia to kick off a four-day tour through the Gulf region, focusing on economic deals rather than the security crises ranging from war in Gaza to the threat of escalation over Iran’s nuclear programme.Tesla CEO and Trump adviser Elon Musk, as well as business leaders including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser are travelling with the president.Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth are also among those on the trip.Trump will first visit Riyadh, site of a Saudi-US Investment Forum, heading to Qatar on Wednesday and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday.During the Riyadh stop, Trump is expected to offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth well over $100 billion, sources told Reuters, which could include a range of advanced weapons, including C-130 transport aircraft.In other developments:

      Trump has pushed back on criticism for accepting the gift of a $400m (£303m) plane from Qatar’s royal family to replace Air Force One. He claimed it would be “stupid” not to accept the gift. He has said it is “a very public and transparent transaction”. More

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      Biden destroyed Harris bid by staying in race too long, top adviser says in book

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      Joe Biden “totally fucked us” by leaving it too late to drop out of the 2024 US presidential election, a former top campaign aide to Kamala Harris has told the authors of a new book.David Plouffe, who was manager of Barack Obama’s winning 2008 campaign and a senior adviser in his White House, was drafted in to help Harris’s bid for president after the declining Biden withdrew from the race last summer.Harris’s 107-day sprint against Donald Trump was “a fucking nightmare”, Plouffe is quoted as saying by authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. A copy was obtained by the Guardian.“And it’s all Biden,” Plouffe adds, reflecting on the former US president’s decisions to run for re-election and then to cling on for more than three weeks after a catastrophic debate performance against Trump raised questions about his mental acuity and age. “He totally fucked us.”Plouffe, along with some other former Obama staffers, has previously been critical of Biden and his role in the Democratic defeat. In the wake of Harris’s loss he posted a message on X – formerly known as Twitter – that the Harris campaign had begun in a “deep hole”. He later deleted his account.The book describes how Plouffe had received calls from donors worried about Biden’s diminishing energy, cognitive skills and ability to deliver a speech. He in turn pressed the White House and Democratic party if they felt sure that the then president could win another election and was repeatedly told he could.But Tapper, chief Washington correspondent for CNN, and Thompson, a national political correspondent for Axios, spoke to around 200 people for the book, including members of Congress and White House and campaign insiders. Some had been sounding the alarm about Biden’s mental acuity and about desperate efforts by his close staff and allies to hide the extent of his deterioration.One senior aide, who quit the White House because they did not think Biden should run, admits to the authors that “we attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023”.“I love Joe Biden. When it comes to decency, there are few in politics like him. Still, it was a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again.”A prominent Democratic strategist says of Biden’s determination to seek re-election: “It was an abomination. He stole an election from the Democratic party; he stole it from the American people.”Original Sin is one of several eagerly awaited books about the 2024 election and an alleged White House conspiracy.Biden, 82, seemingly tried to preempt its revelations last week with media appearances on BBC Radio 4’s Today program and ABC’s talkshow The View. Biden has signed with Creative Artists Agency for representation and hired communications strategist Chris Meagher to help burnish his public reputation.But the 27 June 2024 debate in Atlanta was no anomaly, the book argues. Since at least 2022 Biden has been increasingly prone to lose his train of thought and struggle to remember the names of top aides. His speeches can be incoherent and difficult to hear. When he proved incapable of delivering a two-minute video address without stumbling, aides filmed him with two cameras so the edit would be less obvious.Original Sin tells how prominent figures tried to intervene in various ways. Obama visited the White House in 2023 and warned Biden: “Just make sure you can win the race.”Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood powerbroker and significant Democratic donor, yelled at longtime Biden ally Ron Klain: “Joe Biden cannot run for re-election! He needs to drop out! He can’t win! What’s the plan B?” Klain admitted there was no plan B.And Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, confronted the president after the debate last July at his home in Rehoboth, Delaware, and appealed to his desire to preserve his legacy. He warned Biden that, he if stayed in the race and lost to Trump then 50 years of “amazing, beautiful work goes out the window. But it’s worse than that – you will go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”On their way out, the book reports, Biden put his hands on Schumer’s shoulders and told him: “You have bigger balls than anyone I’ve ever met.”Biden stepped aside on 21 July and quickly endorsed Harris, but it was too late, the authors contend. He had already helped usher in the fate that he most wanted to avoid: the return of Trump to the White House. More

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      Trump’s Hollywood ambassador Jon Voigt joins coalition asking for tax incentives

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      Donald Trump’s Hollywood ambassadors, including actor Jon Voight, joined labor unions and major studios in asking the US president to expand and extend tax incentives for film and television productions.In a letter addressed to Trump on Sunday, the studios and unions did not mention his threat to introduce 100% tariffs on films made abroad, but instead thanked him for supporting the industry through their “shared goal” of domestic production.“We appreciate and thank you for the support you have shown our industry. We also appreciate your understanding of the need to increase domestic film and television production to bring back American jobs,” the letter read.The letter also calls for Trump to back three tax provisions in the upcoming budget reconciliation bill being drafted by Congress that it argues would “immediately make America more competitive, expand the American media industry, brings jobs back to America, and support the independent spirit of American business”.They include reviving section 199 of the tax code, which provided deductions for manufacturing to film and TV production, expanding section 181 to double to $30m in production expenditures, and restoring the section 461 ability to allow companies to carry back their net operating losses.The letter was signed by the Motion Picture Association, which represents Hollywood studios, and unions including Sag-Aftra, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, the Teamsters, as well as Voight and actor Sylvester Stallone, two of Trump’s so-called “special ambassadors” to Hollywood.There is no mention of Trump’s tariff proposal on foreign film production, which sparked outcry and confusion in the entertainment industry. The White House has since insisted: “No final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made.”Trump announced his 100% tariff on foreign films a day after a meeting with Voight at Mar-a-Lago, during which the Midnight Cowboy and Heat actor presented his “comprehensive plan” to “make Hollywood great again”.Voight has since defended Trump’s proposal and expressed surprise at the negative reaction from across the industry, arguing: “Something has to be done, and it’s way past time.” More

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      Illinois governor is first in US to block federal access to personal data on autism

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      Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, has signed a first-in-the-nation executive order to block the federal government from collecting personal health data related to autism, a direct rebuke to the Trump administration.Pritzker, a Democrat who has been one of the more vocal critics of Donald Trump’s second administration, signed the order last week, saying he wanted to protect “dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination”.It came two days after the US Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, announced a plan to use data maintained by the National Institutes of Health, and claims submitted for Medicare and Medicaid coverage, to determine the causes of autism. While the agency did not release details of the plan, Kennedy promised it would follow “applicable privacy laws to protect Americans’ sensitive health information”.Prior to his rise to health secretary, Kennedy joined anti-vaccine advocates in claiming childhood vaccines are responsible for autism, but studies by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others have ruled that out.Pritzker’s executive order bans state agencies from disclosing “personally identifiable autism-related data” outside of state government unless the person or their guardian gives consent, it’s required by legal action, it’s necessary to provide services such as employment or housing or is otherwise required by law. State contractors, vendors and grant recipients are also covered.“We are taking steps to ensure that our state remains a leader in protecting the rights of individuals with autism and all people with disabilities,” Pritzker said.Andy Shih, chief science officer for Autism Speaks, a national advocacy group funding research and services, said he’s unaware of a similar declaration elsewhere. And while Kennedy promises to abide by privacy guidelines, Shih said with advances in computational power and algorithmic thinking, what’s private data today might not be tomorrow.Government investigators could use some techniques to get more information than what is previously disclosed. In the wrong hands, it could be used against patients to deny them constitutionally protected rights.“There’s always that concern,” Shih said. “Being proactive to protect privacy, which is something we value as a society, this should be applauded.”Kennedy has previously said he wants to be able to announce by September some of the causes of autism, a complex brain disorder better known as autism spectrum disorder because it affects people differently. For some people, profound autism means being nonverbal or having intellectual disabilities, while milder cases might mean difficulty with social and emotional skills.Experts say Kennedy’s planned database isn’t appropriate to uncover autism’s causes in part because there’s no information about genetics. However, Shih noted that the Department of Health and Human Services’s announcement was about creating a platform to help understand a range of chronic illnesses, which he said could be useful.Shih added that linking data sets is a proven way of studying issues of health. He pointed to a study published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found dementia in significantly higher numbers among autistic adults over age 65 than the general population. It was achieved by linking numerical identifiers from two different data sets. More

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      First group of white South Africans arrive in US after Trump grants refugee status

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      The first group of white South Africans granted refugee status by Donald Trump’s administration has arrived in the US, stirring controversy in South Africa as the US president declared the Afrikaners victims of a “genocide”.The Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists, were met at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC by US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, and deputy secretary of homeland security, Troy Edgar, with many given US flags to wave.Reuters reported that the group numbered 59 adults and children, citing a state department official, while Associated Press said there were 49.At Dulles airport, Landau told the assembled white South Africans: “It is such an honour for us to receive you here today … it makes me so happy to see you with our flag in your hands.He invoked his family’s history, saying: “My own father was born in Europe and had to leave his country when Hitler came in … We respect what you have had to deal with these last few years.”He added: “We’re sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa.”On the same day the group arrived in the US, Trump’s government also ended legal protections that had temporarily protected Afghans from deportation, citing an improved security situation in the country, which is ruled by the Taliban.One consideration for resettling Afrikaners not Afghans was that “they could be easily assimilated into our country,” Landau told reporters at the airport.Trump suspended the US refugee settlement programme in January, leaving more than 100,000 people approved for refugee resettlement stranded. Then, in February, he signed an executive order directing officials to grant refugee status to Afrikaners, whose leaders ruled during apartheid while violently repressing the Black majority.“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House, when asked why white South Africans were being prioritised for resettlement above victims of famine and war elsewhere on the continent, echoing a far-right conspiracy theory that has also been amplified by his South African-born billionaire adviser Elon Musk.Trump added that the Afrikaners’ race “makes no difference to me”. He said South Africa’s leaders were travelling to meet him next week, but that he would not attend the G20 leaders’ meeting in Johannesburg in November unless the “situation is taken care of”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said at a conference in Ivory Coast that he had told Trump by phone that he had received false information about white South Africans being discriminated against, from people who disagreed with government efforts to redress the racial inequalities that still persist three decades after white minority rule ended.“We think that the American government has got the wrong end of the stick here, but we’ll continue talking to them,” he said.White South Africans typically have 20 times the wealth of Black people, according to an article in the Review of Political Economy. The Black South African unemployment rate is 46.1%, compared with 9.2% for white people.Laura Thompson Osuri, executive director of Homes Not Borders, a refugee care nonprofit in the Washington area, stood in the airport check-in area with a sign reading: “Refugee. Noun. A person who has been forced to leave his or her country due to persecution, war or violence. Afrikaners are not refugees.”Osuri said of Trump’s policy: “It’s for showing: ‘Look at us. We do welcome people as long as they look like us.’”Democrats also condemned the Afrikaners’ resettlement. Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen told a thinktank event: “To watch the Trump administration apply what I call their global apartheid policy … is just an outrageous insult to the whole idea of our country.”Meanwhile, the Episcopal church said it was ending its decades-long work with the US government supporting refugees, after it was asked to help resettle the white South Africans, citing its “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation”. More

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      Brazil’s president seeks ‘indestructible’ links with China amid Trump trade war

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      The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has heralded his desire to build “indestructible” relations with China, as the leaders of three of Latin America’s biggest economies flew to Beijing against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s trade war and the profound international uncertainty his presidency has generated.Lula touched down in China’s capital on Sunday for a four-day state visit, accompanied by 11 ministers, top politicians and a delegation of more than 150 business leaders.Hours later Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, arrived, making a beeline for the Great Wall of China and declaring his desire for the South American country to not “only look one way” towards the US. “We have decided to take a profound step forward between China and Latin America,” Petro said.Chile’s Gabriel Boric has also travelled to Beijing to attend Tuesday’s meeting between members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and Chinese representatives.Addressing hundreds of Chinese and Brazilian business chiefs in the Chinese capital on Monday, Lula hit out at Trump’s tariffs, saying he could not accept the measures “that the president of the US tried to impose on planet Earth, from one day to the next”.The Brazilian leftist said he hoped to build an “indispensable” relationship with China – already Brazil’s top trading partner – and heaped praise on his Communist party hosts as his officials announced $4.6bn (£3.5bn) of Chinese investment in their country. On Tuesday, Lula is scheduled to meet China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who is expected to return the visit in July, when Xi travels to the Brics summit in Rio.“China has often been treated as though it were an enemy of global trade when actually China is behaving like an example of a country that is trying to do business with countries which, over the past 30 years, were forgotten by many other countries,” said Lula, who is expected to seek major Chinese investments in Brazilian infrastructure projects.The visit of the three South American leaders to China underlines the east Asian country’s rapidly growing footprint in a region where, over the past 25 years, it has become a voracious consumer of commodities such as soybeans, iron ore and copper. Chinese companies have also poured into the region. Electric cars made by the Chinese manufacturer BYD can be seen cruising the streets of Brazilian cities, from Brasília to Boa Vista, deep in the Amazon.The visits also come amid global jitters over Trump’s volatile presidency and Latin American anxiety and suspicion over the US president’s plans for a region where he has threatened to “take back” the Panama canal – by force if necessary.Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian thinktank and university, said the presence of the three South American presidents in Beijing underscored how, in the Trump era, with the US in retreat, such leaders were increasingly reaching out to other parts of the world.“It tells us that countries around the world are willing to go out … to exploit all the opportunities that are there in the international system – and there are many. Because, as America turns away from free trade and as America adopts a policy that is … instead of transactional, predatory – countries have an incentive to engage with those who are transactional,” Spektor said, pointing to recent trips Lula made to Japan and Vietnam.“[Lula] is very proactively trying to open trade for Brazil at a time when America is undoing the previous rules of the game, and the new rules of the game are not yet born … These [Latin American] countries want to shape the norms that are likely to emerge now. And those rules are not going to emerge in Washington DC. They are going to be made globally,” Spektor added.Spektor said Latin American leaders such as Lula had long considered the world a multipolar place. “What happened on 20 January [with Trump’s return to power] is that the barrage of policy change coming from Washington DC has accelerated the belief that was already in place that the axis of global power has for a while been moving towards the east, and somewhat towards the south.” More

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      ‘Just wildly illegal’: top Democrats push to censure Trump’s plan to accept Qatar jet

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      Top Democrats in the US Senate are pushing for a vote on the floor of the chamber censuring Donald Trump’s reported plan to accept a $400m luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One and later as a fixture in the Trump’s personal presidential library.Four Democratic members of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Monday that they would press for a vote later this week. They said that elected officials, including the president, were not allowed to accept large gifts from foreign governments unless authorized to do so by Congress.Cory Booker from New Jersey, Brian Schatz from Hawaii, Chris Coons from Delaware and Chris Murphy from Connecticut cast the reported gift of the Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a clear conflict of interest and a serious threat to national security.“Air Force Once is more than just a plane – it’s a symbol of the presidency and of the United States itself,” the senators said in a joint statement. “No one should use public service for personal gain through foreign gifts.”News of a possible gift of the luxury jet prompted immediate scathing criticism from senior Democrats. Though the Qatari government has stressed that no final decision has yet been made, Trump appeared to confirm it on Sunday when he commented on social media that the transfer was being made “in a very public and transparent transaction”.The plan appears to be for the 13-year-old plane to be fitted out by the US military for use as Air Force One and then, when Trump leaves the White House, for it to be put on display in his presidential library – in effect being handed to Trump for his own personal use.The reported arrangement comes as Trump sets off for a tour of the Middle East, including Qatar. Another of the countries on the tour, the United Arab Emirates, has also become embroiled in controversy over potential conflicts of interest involving Trump.Last week it was revealed that an investment firm based in Abu Dhabi had injected $2bn into a stablecoin venture launched by Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto company as an investment into the crypto exchange Binance.Senate Democrats are also gearing up to challenge Trump’s conflicts of interest under congressional rules governing the sale of military weapons to foreign countries.Murphy, the senator from Connecticut who has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm over conflicts of interest in the second Trump administration, has said he will use his powers to challenge arms sales as a way of forcing a full debate and Senate vote on both the Qatar plane and UAE stablecoin issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe said on social media that he would object to “any military deal with a nation that is paying off Trump personally – we can’t act like this is normal foreign policy”.He added: “UAE’s investment in Trump crypto and Qatar’s gifting of a plane is nuclear grade graft.”In an earlier post on Bluesky, Murphy described the idea of Qatar handing over the jet as being “just wildly illegal”.Trump has so far brushed aside the Democratic fury. He praised Qatar’s offer on Monday as a “great gesture” and said he would “never be one to turn down that kind of offer”. More

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      Trump’s dangerous projects follow a predictable pattern

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      Soon after Elon Musk slapped the air with a double Nazi salute, his brother Kimbal went on X to say: “This is what success feels like.” And three months ago, he seemed to have a point.The Trump administration, which appeared to have been co-led for a time by big brother Musk, is now in a period of retrenchment. Initiatives focused on Gaza, tariffs, spending, deporting millions of migrantand “government efficiency” have all deflated somewhat.We are admittedly only a small fraction of the way through this second Trump term, but a pattern appears to be emerging: the president proclaims a big policy goal, Maga appointees scramble to interpret his objectives, and then the whole thing is abandoned in paroxysm. Which isn’t to say that real harm isn’t being caused – just less than might otherwise be.First, the Gaza riviera. Trump’s response to the genocide in Palestine was to envision a grand ethnic cleansing embellished by Carrara marble and rickrack. Questions the president didn’t seem to have asked in advance: where would the Palestinians go? Why would Egypt or Jordan risk regime-ending instability? Who would pay for it all? Faced with the difficulty of implementing a complex plan,which only 3% of Israeli Jews regard as immoral, Trump retreated.But not before facilitating harm. His explicit endorsement of the majority view in Israel that Palestinian residents of Gaza should relocate has only permitted the leadership in that country to accelerate their Biden-era policy. Now, Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, openly speaks of using starvation as a tool in Gaza, something the Israelis were shy about admitting only seven months ago. And since Benjamin Netanyahu’s government broke the ceasefire with Hamas in March, Israeli troops have murdered more than 2,100 Palestinians – the majority of them children. Again, an extension of the Biden policy, but without the chintzy gilt.The tariff debacle, meanwhile, showcased the administration’s inability to shoot straight. A Forbes analysis counts nine flip-flops on tariff policy. Bad policy is bad – whiplash makes it worse.One of the arguments explaining the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency – the tender most countries use for trade and global finance – is that the US is a big and stable country that pays its bills and honors its commitments. That trust in America’s ability to manage an economy confers lots of benefits to Americans, such as lower borrowing and transaction expenses. Demand for the US dollar allows the US to finance deficits, seemingly indefinitely.But there are signs that the erratic tariff policy has caused other countries – who buy US debt – to question old assumptions about stability and growth. It turns out that, like addressing Palestine, trade policy is hard.But it didn’t have to be like this – a measured tariff policy could have helped enhance American industry. Coupled with prohibitions on stock buybacks – a Reagan-era concession to corruption that allows CEOs to inflate their stock prices and “performance” bonuses – a sensible tariff policy could have helped facilitate the investment of corporate profits domestically, reinvigorating the labor movement to produce better jobs. But policy requires a clear statement of goals and an understanding of how to get there – neither of which the Trump administration was able to articulate. Economic growth has almost certainly been dented by the bizarre trade war and myriad reversals – so we’ll probably see more deficit spending at higher borrowing rates.And then there’s Yemen, where the Houthi government has harassed Israeli-affiliated boats in response to the genocide. The catastrophic effort to bomb the Yemenis into submission, again, an extension of Joe Biden’s Israel policy, was preceded with bluster. In March, Trump issued a message on his website that read, “To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”But nearly two months into America’s bombing campaign, which has killed hundreds in Yemen at vast expense, the effort to open trade routes in the Red Sea has resulted in a negotiated detente which falls far short of achieving Trump’s goals. The deal commits the Yemenis to leaving American ships alone, but says nothing about Israeli-affiliated vessels. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal took the Israelis by surprise.Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overestimated its potential and overstated its accomplishments: at a meeting last month, Musk said he expected Doge cuts would save $150bn, or 85% less than the promised $1tn. Now Musk is returning to Tesla – whose weak quarterly results have caused the stock price to crash back to earth.All of it a bad joke, played on the American people.Trump’s inability to follow through on his big initiatives is probably attributable to lots of things, but the quality of the man, and the people around him, stick out. Pete Hesgeth, the secretary of defense, appears unfocused and unbalanced in interviews. Kristi Noem, head of the US Department of Homeland Security, seems obsessed with pageantry and appearances, while the attorney general, Pam Bondi, exhibits sycophantic tendencies. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and JD Vance spent a lot of time explaining how dangerous Trump was – Vance compared Trump to Hitler – before joining his administration. All seem to have been hired for their ability to flatter and prostrate themselves, which is not the same as competence or executive experience.So now, a bigger picture is emerging. The operating moral principle directing the Trump presidency seems to be that people are generally worse than they proclaim to be. And the president has gone out of his way to hire people with limited talent and ability, whose main qualification is Maga, people who can’t follow through on big pronouncements and goals. It is indeed government by the worst.

      Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace More