President Donald Trump has bragged about “running the world,” in a new interview with The Atlantic.
He met with two reporters from the publication, and Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor who broke the Signalgate leak scandal. Goldberg’s presence is notable, considering the president called him a “total sleazebag” just a month ago.
The resulting article is titled “I Run the Country and the World,” despite Trump’s apparent belief that it would be headlined “The Most Consequential President of this Century.”
In the wide-ranging piece, Trump appeared to ignore a tumultuous first 100 days in office and news of record-low approval ratings, and literally declared that he runs the world.
“The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” he said when asked if this term felt different to his first.
“And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
Trump’s trademark hubris glossed over the fact that he has failed to deliver on key campaign promises and has, actually, made some things much worse.
In fact, his trade policies and supercharged tariffs have brought the world to the brink of recession and battered financial markets.
And far from “running the world,” traditional allies are running from him. Despite a duplicitous Truth Social “good luck” message before Canadians head to the polls, Trump has all but severed ties with our northern neighbor amid musings about adopting the country as America’s 51st state.
Denmark, similarly, has been pushed further away—with Trump’s designs on Greenland affecting the relationship.
China, meanwhile, has contradicted Trump twice within a week over his alleged lies about negotiations to tone down his trade war with them, and Ukraine remains under fire from Russia despite his promise to end that conflict on day one of his presidency.
“In fact, in each of these areas—and many more still—Trump has made matters worse,” the Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf wrote in his report card on Trump 2.0 so far.
That article, incidentally, is titled “The Worst First 100 Days of Any Administration in History.”
Trump, however, doesn’t care. In fact, he’s enjoying “blowing up” the White House.
That’s according to Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and major Trump ally. “The first time, the first weeks, it was just ‘Let’s blow this place up,’ ” he told The Atlantic. “This time, he’s blowing it up with a twinkle in his eye.”
Don’t believe Ballard? Take it from the man himself. “I’m having a lot of fun, considering what I do,” he told the publication when asked about Ballard’s assertion. “You know, what I do is such serious stuff.”
Trump puts his own success down to understanding the Washington, D.C. landscape more than he did earlier. “When I did it before, I never did it, you know?” he said. “I didn’t know people in Washington.”
Cliff Sims, a Trump communications aide from his first term who helped with hiring for the second term, said the president is now surrounded by unwavering MAGA loyalists ready to do his bidding, whatever that might entail.
“I just asked him, ‘Who do you want? Who should prepare DHS? Who should prepare ICE? Who are the rock stars from your team? Let’s get them all rolling.’” Sims said.
Trump’s bidding—namely the mass deportation of immigrants, gender identity crackdowns and super-charged tariff assaults on trading partners, to name a few—are delivered with such intensity that it leaves the world, and the press, reeling. His team calls this the “shock and awe” tactic.
“We did all the immigration and border executive orders. If we just left it at that, all the stories would have been about what bad people we are—we’re kicking people out of this country,“ an anonymous adviser said.
“But then right after he signed those border executive orders, bam: the J6 pardons.”
This tactic, along with constant dialogue-bending public input from Trump, meant “the media had to choose what to cover. It’s either the J6 pardons or the immigration executive orders.”
Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon said that Trump’s rise from the ashes of his scandal-laden first term instilled in him an unshakable belief.
“When you’ve come back from such long odds, you clearly feel, ‘I can do anything,’” he told The Atlantic.
Trump agrees. “I got indicted five different times by five different scumbags, and they’re all looking for jobs now, so it’s one of those things. Who would have thought, right? It’s been pretty amazing,” he said.
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