The Trump Presidency Timeline

The Trump–Vance White House has bravely taken a stand against historical truth, deleting a post from Vice-President JD Vance’s official account that dared to call the Armenian genocide a genocide. The now-vanished message, posted during Vance’s trip to Armenia, said he was honoring the victims of the Armenian genocide — a phrase that apparently triggered the administration’s emergency "oops, our values were posted by mistake" protocol.

Once Ankara (and presumably Trump’s ego) were notified, an aide rushed out to explain that the word "genocide" was a staff error by people who weren’t even on the trip, as though the term had just randomly stumbled onto the vice-president’s account and hit send. By the time Vance spoke to reporters, he’d downgraded one of the 20th century’s most documented mass exterminations to "a very terrible thing that happened a little over 100 years ago," which is how you describe a fender bender, not a campaign of extermination.

Joe Biden formally recognized the Armenian genocide in 2021, but the Trump administration has eagerly scrambled back to the pre-recognition era, where Turkish government feelings count more than dead Armenians or basic historical accuracy. Armenian advocacy groups called Vance a coward and accused the administration of bowing to Turkish pressure, while Rep. Jim McGovern called the deletion "disgusting and pathetic" and pointed out the obvious: the Armenian genocide is a fact, and this White House is deleting facts to keep its authoritarian buddies happy. Freedom, truth, and moral clarity — all subject to deletion by the social media team.

J.P. Cooney, one of Jack Smith’s former top prosecutors who helped build the obstruction and conspiracy cases against Donald Trump, just announced he’s running for Congress in Virginia. In a development that surely delights the current White House, the guy Trump’s DOJ fired days into his second term for the crime of prosecuting the president is now trying to get his own subpoena power. Bold move from someone who has already seen what happens when you take the phrase “no one is above the law” too literally.

Cooney is running as a Democrat in Virginia’s proposed new Seventh District, a blue-leaning slice of the state that runs from Arlington out into rural Virginia—basically a test case for whether “I prosecuted Trump, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, and Peter Navarro” now counts as a campaign slogan or a witness list. His 18-year DOJ career ended in January 2025 when Trump’s Justice Department cleaned house and tossed out the entire special counsel team like they were classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

All this is unfolding while Jack Smith tells Congress his team had proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump ran a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election, only to see one of the cases tossed because a judge decided Smith’s appointment was unlawful. Meanwhile, Trump keeps screaming “witch hunt,” calling Smith a “deranged animal,” and nudging Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after the people who dared investigate him—while the FBI is seizing ballots in Georgia for the latest chapter of Stop the Steal: Extended Universe. Cooney, for his part, is pitching bipartisanship as a “hallmark” of his life, which is adorable in an era where one party is trying to govern and the other is trying to retroactively nullify an election from six years ago.

So yes, the guy who used to indict coup-curious Republicans now wants to sit in the chamber with them. If he wins, the House GOP won’t just be screaming about the “deep state” on Fox; they’ll be stuck sharing the elevator with it.

Remember when "virtue-signalling" meant some liberal on Twitter reminding you to say chairperson? Adorable times. Trump looked at that and decided the real growth market was vice-signalling: performative racism and misogyny as a brand strategy. From his 2015 "they're rapists" campaign launch to posting a video of the Obamas depicted as apes, the man didn’t just dog-whistle, he brought an airhorn to a Klan rally and called it authenticity.

This is now an established rightwing business model: constantly violate basic norms, gorge on free media coverage, then claim you’re bravely "saying what everyone’s thinking" when you’re really just saying what the actual bigots are thinking. Trump’s Access Hollywood "pussy-grabbing" tape didn’t end his career; it opened the door for JD Vance’s "childless cat ladies" spiel and Tucker Carlson’s escalating misogynist cosplay. Each stunt makes the next one worse and more acceptable, a kind of hate-based multi-level marketing scheme where the product is social collapse.

The article walks through how this vice-signalling arms race has turned politics into a contest over who can be the most proudly cruel, with Trump as the trendsetter and Farage, Berlusconi & friends as the international franchisees. The point isn’t policy; it’s to show your base you’re willing to dehumanize the right targets and dare anyone to object. Call it the new conservative value system: family, flag, and publicly test-driving fascist rhetoric for clicks.

The annual bipartisan gathering of the nation's governors — one of the last places where red and blue could sit in the same room without a security perimeter — is disintegrating because Donald Trump has decided that only Republican governors get to come to the White House. The National Governors Association, whose entire job is "represent all 55 governors, not just the ones who like Truth Social posts," has now pulled the plug on its formal meeting with Trump after the White House tried to turn it into a GOP-only business session.

Democratic governors responded by announcing a boycott of the traditional White House dinner, politely saying they "will not be attending" instead of the more accurate, "we're not showing up to be extras in your campaign ad." Even NGA chair and Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt had to send around a letter explaining that when you exclude half the country’s governors from a supposedly institutional event, it kind of stops being an NGA thing and starts being a party fundraiser with better table linens.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt helpfully explained that Trump "has discretion to invite anyone he wants" because the White House is both "the people's house" and also his house, a fascinating new constitutional doctrine where public institutions become Airbnbs for whichever strongman currently has the nuclear codes. Meanwhile, the NGA’s CEO called it an "important tradition" ruined by the administration’s decision to make it openly partisan, which is a very polite way of saying: this White House looked at one of the last functioning bipartisan forums and thought, "How do we break that?"

This all comes after last year’s performance, when Trump threatened to withhold federal funds from Maine because Democratic Gov. Janet Mills wouldn’t obey his order on transgender athletes, then confidently predicted her political career was over. She’s now running for Senate, the NGA is fracturing, and the "bipartisan" governors' conference has been repurposed into yet another loyalty pageant. American federalism: brought to you by the guy who thinks separation of powers is a bad TV ratings metric.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier in public health: if you can’t kill vaccines outright, just quietly make it impossible to approve new ones. The FDA has refused to even review Moderna’s application for a new mRNA flu shot – a vaccine that produced stronger antibody responses and no safety concerns – because the trials compared it to standard flu shots instead of the suddenly preferred high-risk formulas. Small problem: for people under 65, that high-dose option is not the standard of care. So the agency’s excuse is not just flimsy, it’s factually wrong. Science has been replaced with vibes.

To really sell the farce, the refusal-to-file letter was personally signed by Vinay Prasad, the Trump-appointed head of the FDA’s biologics division, even though this kind of bureaucratic kneecapping is usually done by the review team. No formal rules have changed, but a leaked email shows Prasad promising to “revise” the flu vaccine framework, while HHS has already downgraded routine flu shots for kids to a “shared clinical decision-making” maybe-kinda-sorta recommendation – all without consulting outside experts. The EU, Canada, and Australia are reviewing the same vaccine like normal countries, while the US moves toward a new standard of care: politics first, medicine eventually, if the base allows it.

The message to vaccine makers is clear: invest years and millions into R&D, run trials the FDA helped design, show your product is safe and more effective, and then watch Trump’s health bureaucracy slam the door in your face because it’s busy auditioning for a Tucker Carlson segment. The administration isn’t just undermining public health; it’s methodically turning vaccine approval into a partisan loyalty test, with Americans’ immune systems as collateral damage.

Donald Trump has discovered a bold new frontier in economic statecraft: threatening to barricade a jointly owned $4.6bn international bridge and only later learning who paid for it. After raging online that the Gordie Howe International Bridge has “virtually no US content” and that Canada “owns both ends”, Mark Carney gently explained reality to him like a tired parent correcting a child who insists the moon is made of cheese. Canada fronted the cash, Michigan co-owns it, and yes, U.S. steel and workers were involved. So much for the big patriotic boycott of American jobs.

Rather than admit he doesn’t understand how bridges, ownership, or maps work, Trump blamed Barack Obama for “stupidly” approving the project — a project he himself once demanded be built “expeditiously” during his first term. Local officials, like Windsor’s mayor Drew Dilkens, called the rant “insane”, which is Canadian for “we are screaming into a polite void.” Meanwhile, business leaders are pointing out that threatening to choke off one of North America’s key trade arteries is a self-own of historic proportions, but this White House has never met a supply chain it didn’t want to set on fire.

Because one tantrum is never enough, Trump also revived his Canada grievances Greatest Hits: dairy, tariffs, and now the deranged claim that if Canada signs a trade deal with China, Beijing will somehow abolish ice hockey and seize the Stanley Cup. Yes, the sitting U.S. president is suggesting that China’s master plan is to invade Canada’s national pastime via customs paperwork. Canadians responded by roasting him online and reminding everyone they haven’t won the Cup since 1993, so if China wants to “eliminate” it, they’re a few decades late to that party.

Ontario’s populist premier Doug Ford, not to be out-populisted, vowed to “double down” on banning U.S. liquor from provincial shelves unless Trump drops his tariffs, turning cross-border trade into a hostage swap between whiskey and welded steel. What’s left is a president casually threatening to weaponize a critical international bridge, slap 100% tariffs on a neighbor, and rewrite trade policy based on a conspiracy theory about Xi Jinping cancelling hockey night in Canada. But sure, tell us again how this is all about protecting American workers.