Trump revels in mass federal firings and jeers at Biden before adoring conservative crowd
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OXON HILL, Md. — President Trump on Saturday evening praised his administration’s sweeping effort to fire thousands of federal employees, congratulating himself for “dominating” Washington and sending bureaucrats “packing.”
Addressing an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, Trump promised: “We’re going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come.”
The president argues that voters gave him a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the U.S.-Mexico border and extending tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.
Trump clicked back into campaign mode during his hour-plus speech, predicting that the Republican Party will continue to win and defy history, which has shown that a president’s party typically struggles during midterm elections.
“I don’t think we’ve been at this level, maybe ever,” he said of Republicans.
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” he said, likening his new administration’s opening month to being on a roll through the first four holes of a round of golf — which he said gives him confidence for the fifth hole.
Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help carry out the firings, and the billionaire suggested Saturday that more might be coming.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
A short time later, an “HR” email was sent to federal workers across numerous agencies titled “What did you do last week” and asking that recipients “reply with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” It cautioned against sending classified information, and gave a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.
Trump also said during his speech that he’d carry out harsher immigration policies. But those efforts have largely been overshadowed by his administration’s mass federal firings. He announced that one federal entity with a workforce that had been significantly reduced, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.
“The agency’s name has been removed from its former building,” he said.
President Trump said Elon Musk would be checking out Fort Knox to make sure the gold is still there.
The president also repeated his previous promises to scrutinize the country’s gold depository at Ft. Knox.
“Would anybody like to join us?” he asked to cheers from the crowd at the suggestion that administration forces might converge on the complex. “We want to see if the gold is still there.”
Trump also devoted large chunks of his address to reliving last year’s presidential race, jeering at Biden and mispronouncing the first name of former Vice President Kamala Harris, his election day opponent, saying: “I haven’t said that name in a while.”
He went on to use an expletive to describe Biden’s handling of border security, despite noting that evangelical conservatives had urged him not to use foul language.
Trump had kinder words for Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying “I happen to like” him. Still, he said, “we’ve been treated very unfairly by China and many other countries.”
On the sidelines of the conference, Trump met with conservative Polish President Andrzej Duda amid rising tensions in Europe over Russia’s war on Ukraine. After Duda took the stage, Trump saluted him and Argentine President Javier Milei, who addressed the conference separately.
Duda is “a fantastic man and a great friend of mine,” the U.S. president said, adding: “You must be doing something right, hanging out with Trump.” He noted that Milei was “a MAGA guy, too: Make Argentina Great Again.”
Poland is a longtime ally of Ukraine. Trump upended recent U.S. policy by dispatching top foreign policy advisors to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending fighting in Ukraine.
Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, which has alarmed U.S. allies.
Trump planned to meet at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday.
President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin share some traits and want some of the same things. But a chasm divides them.
Trump also has begun a public back-and-forth with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom the U.S. president called a “dictator.” Meanwhile, Trump has said he plans to meet with Russian President Vladmir Putin — who was reelected last year in a vote that offered Russians little alternative after he cracked down on opponents.
“I’m dealing with President Zelensky. I’m dealing with President Putin,” Trump told the CPAC crowd, adding of fighting in Ukraine, “It affects Europe. It doesn’t really affect us.”
Zelensky has said Trump is living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.”
For much of the time since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the United States, under Biden, pledged that Ukraine would have a role in any major effort to end the fighting, vowing: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Trump’s administration has dispensed with that notion as the Republican president has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.
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“I think we’re pretty close to a deal, and we better be close to a deal,” Trump said Saturday.
Later, the president and First Lady Melania Trump held a dinner at the White House for governors from both parties who were in Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Assn.
The Associated Press is suing three Trump administration officials on 1st- and 5th-Amendment grounds.
The AP says the officials are punishing the news agency for making decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
Associated Press writer Weissert reported from Washington, Gomez Licon from Oxon Hill.
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