NEW YORK (AP) — The marathon Q&A sessions are back, along with the cream Oval Office rug and the Diet Coke button on the Resolute Desk. So, too, are the late-night social media posts that ricochet across the globe and the barrage of executive orders.
But in 10 days, Donald Trump has frozen federal spending and hiring, offered buyouts to more than two million government workers, and ended federal diversity and transgender-rights efforts. He’s fired nearly two dozen independent inspectors general, rewritten American maps, pardoned Jan. 6 protesters who assaulted police, announced plans to detain migrants at Guantánamo Bay, and undone years of his predecessors’ actions with the stroke of his Sharpie pen.
Trump 2.0 looks and sounds a lot like he did during his first go-around. But this time, the president is far more experienced and surrounded by a team that’s spent years planning for its White House return, unleashing a fusillade of action that is testing the bounds of presidential power, sowing confusion and drawing fury from Democrats unsure how to stop him.
“He seems much more comfortable, almost relaxed in how he’s doing the job,” according to Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, who said Trump is showing a new “level of confidence,” having spent four years in office.
“I think he has the people, the policies and the process down. He knows who can get his agenda done, who he wants to surround himself with, the policies he wants to advance, and the process to get that enacted,” said Spicer, who now hosts a show on YouTube.