President Donald Trump has congratulated himself for “dominating” Washington and sending bureaucrats “packing”, saying “nobody has ever seen anything" like his sweeping efforts to fire thousands of US federal employees.
Addressing an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington on Saturday, Trump promised, “We’re going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come”.
The president has spent the opening weeks of his administration arguing he has a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the US-Mexico border and to extend tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.
Trump clicked easily back into campaign mode during a speech that lasted more than an hour.
“Nobody's ever seen anything like this, and nobody's ever seen four weeks like we had,” Trump said.
Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help carry out the firings, with the billionaire vowing on Saturday more was 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.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Trump also repeatedly said he'd carry out harder-line immigration policies but those efforts have largely been overshadowed by his administration's mass federal firings.
He announced that one agency that had been significantly reduced, the US Agency for International Development, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.
The president also repeated his previous promises that his administration will scrutinise the country's gold depository at Fort Knox.
“Would anybody like to join us,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
“We want to see if the gold is still there.”
Trump also devoted large chunks of his address reliving last year's presidential race, jeering at former president Joe Biden and mispronouncing the first name of former vice president Kamala Harris — gleefully proclaiming, “I haven’t said that name in a while”.
The president said immigration and border policy under Biden made him angry.
“I couldn't stand it,” Trump said.
He went on to use an expletive to describe how he thinks of Biden’s handling of border security, despite noting that evangelical conservatives have urged him not to use foul language.
Trump had kinder words for Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying “I happen to like” him, while adding, “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 in Ukraine.
Poland is a longtime ally of Ukraine. Trump upended recent US policy by dispatching top foreign policy advisers 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 US allies.
After his face-to-face with Duda, Trump is meeting on Monday at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron and Thursday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump also has begun a public back and forth with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom the US president called a “dictator” while falsely suggesting that Ukraine started the war — though on Friday he acknowledged that Russia attacked its neighbour.
Trump said during his speech, “I’m dealing with President Zelenskyy. I’m dealing with President Putin” and added of fighting in Ukraine, "It affects Europe. It doesn’t really affect us.”
