The Trump Presidency Timeline

The White House is asking Congress for a casual $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon, with a separate "don’t worry about it" tab coming for the Iran war. Because if there’s one thing this government hates, it’s universal healthcare — and if there’s one thing it absolutely loves, it’s writing blank checks for forever wars and defense contractors who treat the federal budget like their personal ATM.

Lawmakers, who have spent decades rubber-stamping defense bills they didn’t read, are now bravely demanding “more transparency” about where the money is going. Bold stuff from the same institution that turns every conflict into a bipartisan jobs program for Lockheed Martin. So we’ll get a few hearings, some sternly worded questions, and then, once everyone has finished pretending to be shocked by the price tag, the war machine will get fed and Americans will be told there’s just no funding available for things that don’t explode.

Britain is apparently still role‑playing as Robin to America’s Batman, except Batman is now Donald Trump and he keeps threatening to sell Greenland like it’s a Trump golf course with better ice. Former NATO chief George Robertson is shrieking about a £28bn "black hole" in UK defence spending, because the country might not be shovelling enough money into a force structure designed less to defend Britain and more to be the premium DLC pack for the US war machine.

The whole setup, as the editorial politely notes, means only about 15–20% of UK defence spending is actually about defending the UK. The rest is essentially a subscription to the American empire bundle: US‑controlled nuclear weapons, F‑35s that might as well ship with a "Made for Lockheed" watermark, and a posture built around NATO nuclear sharing where Trump treats alliance commitments like overdue casino markers. Britain doesn’t get technological control, just the privilege of being an extra in Washington’s war cosplay.

Whitehall’s big brain move is to promise more defence money… someday in the 2030s, while Trump is busy casually undermining international law and U‑turning on things like the Chagos deal. Meanwhile, the UK is reshaping its military around a US‑style "defence as venture capital" tech ecosystem, because nothing says "national security" like turning war into a start‑up pitch deck. The Guardian ends on the only real question that matters: with Trump back in office, whose security is Britain actually funding – its own, or the whims of an unstable reality‑TV autocrat with the nuclear football on speed dial?

President Trump has a bold new Middle East strategy: he wants U.S. allies to, quote, "go to" the Strait of Hormuz and "just take it." Because when you’re talking about one of the most strategically vital and heavily militarized waterways on Earth, why bother with things like international law, diplomacy, or basic sanity when you can treat it like grabbing the last parking spot at Mar-a-Lago?

The New York Times helpfully brings in national security correspondent Eric Schmitt to explain that, actually, clearing and controlling the Strait of Hormuz by force is not "easy" unless your benchmark for success is "global oil shock and potential regional war." While Trump riffs like a guy yelling at CNN from his recliner, serious people have to game out what happens when a U.S.-led coalition tries to muscle Iran out of a narrow shipping lane bordered by missiles, mines, and small attack boats. Spoiler: it doesn't end with everyone shaking hands and going home for golf.

So we now have the Commander in Chief treating the world’s energy lifeline as a sort of geopolitical Black Friday doorbuster. Allies are supposed to show up, push Iran out of the way, and plant a flag, presumably while Trump takes credit on Truth Social and complains that NATO didn’t Venmo him for the operation. American foreign policy, reimagined as a real estate seizure with cruise missiles.

The US has triumphantly reopened its embassy in Venezuela, returning to Caracas not as a diplomatic partner, but as the guy who kicks in your door, kidnaps your president, and then asks to use your kitchen. Nearly three months after US troops abducted former president Nicolás Maduro and flew him to a federal prison in New York, the Trump administration is now celebrating a "new chapter" in relations with the government that magically appeared after the raid.

Acting president Delcy Rodríguez, formerly Maduro’s vice-president, is now Washington’s new best friend, because nothing says sovereign democracy like having your leadership transition managed by Delta Force and a federal indictment. The State Department is very proud of reopening the embassy that’s been shut since 2019, calling it a “key milestone” in the president’s three‑phase plan for Venezuela, which appears to be: 1) invade, 2) abduct, 3) call it diplomacy.

Veteran diplomat and intelligence official Laura F Dogu has been on the ground restoring the embassy building so the US can fully resume operations, including law enforcement work, now with the added convenience of having the last president locked up in New York. Washington insists this is all about combating drug trafficking and supporting civil society, while the rest of the world watches the US normalize the idea that you can just snatch foreign leaders, install their understudies, and then cut the ribbon on your newly renovated embassy like it’s a mall opening.

Trump’s Cuba policy continues its speedrun of humanitarian horror. After his administration, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio playing cosplay Cold Warrior, effectively strangled Cuba’s oil supply to force regime change, the island is now living in rolling blackouts: hospitals crippled, public transport slashed, people literally sitting in the dark on the Malecón. So naturally, the White House line has been: this is how we help Cubans.

Now a sanctioned Russian tanker — yes, sanctioned by the U.S., EU, and U.K. for that little Ukraine invasion thing — is parked off Cuba with 730,000 barrels of oil, and Trump shrugs from Air Force One that he has “no problem” with it reaching port. The same guy who engineered the blockade suddenly discovers a soft spot for basic survival: “They have to survive,” he says, as though he didn’t personally tighten the noose that produced the island-wide blackouts in the first place.

He insists this doesn’t help Putin — it’s just “one boatload of oil” — while simultaneously claiming Cuba is “finished” and that whether they get the oil “is not going to matter.” So the official doctrine is: Cuba is doomed, but also we care deeply about Cuban people, which is why we cut off their fuel, wrecked their infrastructure, then magnanimously allowed a sanctioned Russian ship to toss them nine or ten days of diesel. It’s not foreign policy; it’s a hostage situation with occasional mood-based mercy.

Trump wraps it all up by saying he’d “prefer letting it in… because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things.” The people needed those things last month, when the blockade was grinding them down, and they’ll need them next month when the diesel runs out again. But sure, one reluctantly permitted tanker from a sanctioned Russian vessel totally balances out an entire U.S. strategy built on making 11 million civilians suffer until their government collapses. Freedom, Trump-Rubio style.