Six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump came to a US Capitol controlled by his Republican Party to take a lengthy victory lap.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started,” he told the joint session of Congress.

In typical Trumpian hyperbole, he said that “many” believed his to be the most successful start to a presidency in US history. He noted what he said was a change in the national mood toward “pride” and “confidence”. He compared himself to George Washington, and boasted about the size of his electoral victory.

The whirlwind start to his presidency offered plenty of material for Trump to cover, and he didn’t shy away from it.

He ticked through a lengthy list of tangible accomplishments – hundreds of executive orders and actions, a freeze on foreign aid, lower levels of illegal border crossing, and the withdrawal from international organisations and agreements.

He also spoke at length about his ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports and moves to get “woke ideology” out of US schools and the military.

“Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone, it’s gone, and we feel so much better for it, don’t we?”

Meanwhile, Democrats – who filled up half the audience in the House chamber – sat in icy silence, as the president repeatedly blamed them, former President Joe Biden and “radical left lunatics” for all the nation’s ills.

Several dozen responded by holding up small black signs with words like “false” and “lies”.

The president seemed to enjoy putting the “bully” in the presidential bully pulpit.

He needled his political adversaries, mocking their refusal to cheer his remarks, dusting off his “Pocahontas” nickname for Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, and wryly noting that attempts to prosecute him “didn’t work out” for his opponents. Texas congressman Al Green was not around to see any of that, however.

Source: BBC