Latest news with #TrumpSecondTerm
Bloomberg
30-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
In Defense of Donald Trump's First Five Months
Pippa Malmgren, former adviser to President George W. Bush, and Helen Thomas, CEO of BlondeMoney, join Merryn Talks Money to review his second term so far. By Save Subscribe to Merryn Talks Money on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to Merryn Talks Money on Spotify Days after Donald Trump's election victory in November, we sat down with Pippa Malmgren, founder and chief executive officer of the Geopolitica Institute and former adviser to Republican President George W. Bush, and Helen Thomas, CEO of the consultancy BlondeMoney and former special adviser at the UK Treasury, to ask what they expected out of the US president's second term.
Daily Mail
06-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Insider reveals how MAGA really feels about Elon Musk and which lawmaker is closest to Trump in second term
President Donald Trump continues to shake up Washington, DC in his second term but one MAGA Republican senator revealed to the Daily Mail just how much the accomplishments of the first 100 days of his administration mean to her state. The dynamic with Trump in his second term versus his first term is a 'night and day' difference, Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming revealed in an exclusive sit-down interview in her office on Capitol Hill. Lummis said she and the president were on 'good terms,' and that he had always been 'gracious and kind' during their interactions, but she acknowledged she was not as close as some of the other senators to Trump. She conceded that Lindsay Graham was the senator that was probably closest to the president. 'Yeah, I'm sure it is,' she chuckled, recalling Graham's post on X endorsing him to be the pope. 'But there are others.' Sen. Tommy Tuberville is also rising within Trump's orbit, demonstrated by the president's decision to speak at the University of Alabama 's commencement. Wyoming's other senator, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso has also grown closer to the president, as he is now serving the second-ranking senate Republican. Once the lone member of the House of Representatives elected to represent Wyoming, Lummis retired in 2016 from Congress after four terms in the House. She returned to the politics realm in 2020 by running for the U.S. Senate to replace retiring U.S. Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, at a time when Rep. Liz Cheney was considering entering the race. Cheney ultimately backed down after the very popular Lummis announced her campaign. Lummis acknowledged that there was some consternation in Washington, DC surrounding President Trump's tariffs, but stressed that her state remained jubilant about the president's second term. 'Even some Republicans around here are hesitant about the tariffs, but that's not really the case in Wyoming,' she said. Lummis said representatives of the cattle industry and the trona soda ash mining industry, two of Wyoming's biggest industries in the state, were not voicing too many concerns about Trump's tariffs. Despite some national parks complaining about the cuts to park service employees, Lummis said that Yellowstone National Park is fully prepared for another busy tourist season and there were no cuts to their number of seasonal workers 'No worries there,' she said about the tourism industry. 'The sky is not falling in Wyoming. The people are so happy.' That's not a huge surprise. In 2024, Trump received 72.3 percent of the vote in Wyoming the highest a presidential candidate has ever received in the state. Lummis was last seen with Trump during his White House event in April where he signed executive orders to boost coal power production. That was a huge boost for the state's coal mining community, she said, citing former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama who pushed an 'anti-coal' agenda that threatened to wipe out the industry. 'The morale boost was massive,' she said. 'It was really big.' Lummis also praised former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum's leadership of the Department of the Interior, and his efforts to boost the production of oil and natural gas on public lands. 'He's very impressive, very intense,' she said. 'As Trump likes to say, he's high energy, he is really driven.' Lummis also praised Sen. JD Vance for his first 100 days as vice president, recalling their brief time spent in the Senate together. 'He's extremely smart ... they underestimated him. He's engaging, he's friendly you can't get under his skin for the most part, he has a good policy mind ... he's thought these things through.' Lummis delivered remarks on the Senate floor celebrating Trump's first 100 days, thanking the president for protecting women's sports by banning biological men, and also gave a special shout out to Elon Musk's effort to cut government waste via DOGE. The DOGE cuts, she explained, were hugely popular with Wyoming voters. She told Daily Mail she personally met with Musk when he first started promoting the DOGE idea, and was amazed to see him succeed where so many politicians had failed. 'I'm very impressed with him. I think that he has an unusual personality, its possible that he's slightly on the spectrum, he's also one of the most brilliant geniuses of our time,' Lummis said. She praised Musk and DOGE for exposing just how 'ill-defined and wasteful' the amount of taxpayer funds shoveled out to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was. 'I think that Elon Musk uncovered some of that and I think it's embarrassing to the Democrats and I think it foiled their plot,' she said. Democrats and leftist activists, she said, chose to target Musk as their new 'boogeyman' after it was clear their attacks on Trump were not working. Leader of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk wears a shirt that says "Tech Support" as he speaks during a cabinet meeting with US President Donald Trump 'I think they're lashing out at him because they need a boogeyman,' she said. 'I think part of it is because they have struggled so much. If you're anti-Trump and he wins every single swing state and wins a really massive victory, continuing to beat on him with no alternative ideas, it's not serving them well.' Lummis has long been a supporter of cryptocurrency, even before the industry became a major contributor to political campaigns. She marveled that President Trump is now leading the way on catapulting the industry to record heights, after President Biden tried to choke the industry with regulatory enforcement actions. She said she had met with Trump's cryptocurrency czar David Sacks a few times and that she was impressed by the progress they were making. 'I think they're doing a good job,' she said. 'I think their emphasis is in the right place.'
