President Donald Trump is acting faster than any other politician of his generation. In a dozen weeks, he has already overturned “American imperialism” in favor of his “exceptionalism.” This is still not the end of the problem, but it represents a considerable step forward for both the United States and the rest of the world.
Simultaneously, he has slashed the federal bureaucracy by eliminating agencies outside his purview and laying off 230,000 federal employees.
It’s been more than three months since Donald Trump began his second term in the White House. He’s issued a staggering number of executive orders of all kinds, giving the impression of a muddled personality. However, despite the short time he’s had, his first results are beginning to show.
Decolonizing the “American Empire”
He initially sought to decolonize the “American empire.” However, after his 2017 attempt failed resoundingly, he changed his approach. On his eighth day in office, he removed the permanent seats of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA Director from the National Security Council by executive order. [ 1 ] This led to a revolt in the senior administration, which led him, sixteen days later, to dismiss his National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn.
This affair left its mark, as the National Security Administration intervened during the last election campaign to falsely assure that Hunter Biden’s computer did not exist and that those who claimed to have seen it were Russian disinformation agents [ 2 ] . Donald Trump also stripped them of their top secret clearance in the first days of his second term [ 3 ] .
This time, Donald Trump took the bull by the horns: he forced early retirement of all the civil servants who had fought against him during his first administration and dissolved the Federal Executive Institute that trained them [ 4 ] . Once this level of personalities was purged, he also withdrew the security clearances of 15 politicians (including former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) to make sure they would not stand in his way again [ 5 ] . “Never two without three,” they say: so he fired six more civil servants from his National Security Council [ 6 ] on April 2, because they were still working with their Straussian friends [ 7 ] .
With those people out of the way, President Donald Trump began peace talks on Ukraine, Palestine, and Iran. Each responded when he put the unelected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in his place, but he also put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his place twice . [ 8 ] The first time, he responded to his plan to annex Gaza by telling him he would rather build a new Riviera than see him occupy it; the second time, he told him he could do nothing to divide Syria, and he could not attack Iran either.
Certainly, for the moment, none of these three hot spots are at peace, but things are moving quickly:
• In Ukraine, he has made it clear that Crimea, Donbass, and part of Novorossia are indeed Russian. Furthermore, it is clear that a presidential election will have to be held. The “integral nationalists” [ 9 ] already know that they have lost. On the territories to be divided, the only two Ukrainian demands are, on the one hand, to recover the civilian nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye (something to which Russia is firmly opposed [ 10 ] ) and whether or not Moscow will be allowed to annex Odessa without having to conquer it.
• In Palestine, he has made almost all the actors admit that Hamas could not return to power in Gaza, but he cannot find an alternative to the “revisionist Zionists” (that is, the disciples of the fascist Vladymyr Jabotinky [ 11 ] ) in Israel. Donald Trump has failed to stop the massacre of Palestinians, who are still starving in Gaza, or to end the sectarian massacres in Syria, which is still dominated by jihadists, but he has forced Israel to abandon its ambitions in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
• In Iran, he is only just beginning and has not yet made the Islamic Republic admit that it cannot safely arm the Shiite minorities in the region, but he has not yet offered to guarantee their security by any other means. The situation here is more difficult because he has threatened Iran, as he did with Ukraine and with the Palestinians, prompting an immediate hardening of Tehran’s stance [ 12 ] .
In all three cases, President Trump used his armies without fighting: he briefly suspended the intelligence that the Pentagon was providing to the Ukrainian armies [ 13 ] causing a military collapse; he also briefly suspended the delivery of arms to Israel, even if this point was not publicized, but caused very serious concern within the Israeli general staff. Conversely, he is accumulating forces in Diego Garcia to threaten Iran [ 14 ] . His only military action will have been to attack Ansar Allah in Yemen; a murderous and tactically useless action, the Yemenis being prepared for it, but useful to get his message across to Iran.
Clean up the federal bureaucracy
Alongside his reorganization of US foreign relations, President Donald Trump has begun to “trim the mammoth,” that is, to prune the useless branches of the US federal state. This is the other major project of the “Jacksonians,” that is, the disciples of President Andrew Jackson [ 15 ] . To do this, he relies on the oligarch Elon Musk. However, the richest man in the world is not a Jacksonian, but a libertarian. His concern is not to destroy the unconstitutional attributes of the federal state for the benefit of the federated states, but to reduce its weight. In this case, these two distinct objectives are served by the same actions, at least so far.
In twelve weeks, Elon Musk has managed to register the resignations or dismiss 230,000 federal agents. While we certainly view this approach as savage, the fact remains that he is not questioning their competence, but their usefulness, which is quite different. Most of them were ensuring the application of rules that should not have existed. This does not mean that they are bad, but that they are not part of the function of the federal government and should therefore not be implemented with taxpayers’ money. This downsizing has accidentally brought to light numerous cases of corruption, for example, a $900,000 grant awarded by the Small and Medium Enterprises Agency to a nine-month-old baby. However, the real issue is not yet there. $6 billion in Pentagon grants have just been canceled, notably those offered to universities, with no connection whatsoever to the defense of the United States. Once DOGE has access to the nation’s accounts, it will be able to see what each transfer made by the federal government is used for, such as the salaries paid to numerous foreign leaders. It is therefore understandable why the legal battle is underway to keep all this secret.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) projects $150 billion in savings over the year from these cuts to bureaucracy and the fight against fraud, a gain of $931.68 per taxpayer. It’s small compared to what was projected, but absolutely substantial.
No comparison should be made between the United States and other states, only with the European Union, whose federal bureaucracy is equally opaque, as the current scandal of hidden subsidies to NGOs shows [ 16 ] .
(…To be continued)
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[ 1 ] “ Donald Trump dissolves the organization of US imperialism ,” by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , January 30, 2017.
[ 2 ] “ Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails ”, Voltaire Network , October 19, 2020.
[ 3 ] “2721 Donald Trump strips intelligence officials involved in political falsification of their clearances”, Voltaire, international news – No. 117 – January 24, 2025.
[ 4 ] “2872 Donald Trump dissolves the American ENA”, Voltaire, international news – No. 120 – February 14, 2025.
[ 5 ] “3138 Donald Trump withdraws the security clearances of 15 opposition figures.”, Voltaire, international news – No. 126 – March 28, 2025.
[ 6 ] “ Trump Fires 6 NSC Officials After Oval Office Meeting With Laura Loomer ”, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan & Ken Bensinger, The New York Times , April 3, 2025.
[ 7 ] “ Vladimir Putin declares war on the Straussians ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , March 5, 2022.
[ 8 ] “2228 Benjamin Netanyahu cooled by his visit to the White House ”, Voltaire, international news – No. 128 – April 11, 2025.
[ 9 ] “ Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists? ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , November 15, 2022.
[ 10 ] “ Statement by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant ”, Voltaire Network , March 26, 2025.
[ 11 ] “ The veil is torn: the hidden truths of Jabotinsky and Netanyahu ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , January 23, 2024.
[ 12 ] “ Iran denounces US threats to peace ,” by Amir Saeid Iravani, Voltaire Network , March 31, 2025.
[ 13 ] “ The West against CRINK ”, by Manlio Dinucci, Translation M.-A., Voltaire Network , April 5, 2025.
[ 14 ] “3185 The Pentagon is preparing for a possible war against Iran”, Voltaire, international news – No. 127 – April 4, 2025.
[ 15 ] “ Donald Trump, an Andrew Jackson 2.0? ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , November 19, 2024.
[ 16 ] “3249 The scandal of the opaque financing of certain NGOs by the European Commission”, Voltaire, international news – No. 128 – April 11, 2025.
