Trump shares bad taste LA wildfires meme as Elon Musk branded ‘truly evil’ by Steve Bannon: Live updates

That’s what the public can expect from the president-elect’s first day in office when he issues a “blizzard” of executive orders set to re-shape US policy on the economy and immigration, according to John Barrasso of Wyoming.

The GOP man invoked the antagonistic military-strategy phrase while describing a preview of January 20, when Trump will be sworn in.

“When President Trump takes office next Monday, there is going to be shock and awe with executive orders,” Barrasso told CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday after meeting with Trump last week.

“A blizzard of executive orders on the economy as well as on the border.”

Disturbingly, he also warned there would be “strings attached” to any federal funds given to California as it recovers from the Los Angeles wildfires.

Oklahoma’s James Lankford was pretty confident during his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday that Trump’s big talk on sending in the troops to conquer the Arctic island was just that and nothing more.

Ariana Baio meanwhile has this on Denmark’s attempts to resolve the matter diplomatically.

According to The New York Times, the president-elect is planning to make his swearing-in to the presidency a three-day bonanza.

The festivities will get underway on Saturday with a party for 500 donors at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, complete with an Elvis impersonator and fireworks and followed on Sunday by a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, a rally event at Washington DC’s Capital One Arena and a candlelit dinner before the main event gets underway the following morning.

Here’s the low-down on the presidential inauguration from Katie Hawkinson.

Several of the president-elect’s nominees to top posts within his new administration will face questioning from the upper chamber of Congress this week as they undergo potentially gruelling confirmation hearings.

Things kick off on Tuesday with what is likely to be one of the most controversial, Pete Hegseth for secretary of defence, while Doug Collins and Doug Burgum will also be under the spotlight.

On Wednesday, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio will be among the top names grilled, followed by the likes of John Ratcliffe, Sean Duffy and Russell Vought.

The hearings inevitably came up on the Sunday shows, with CNN’s Jake Tapper putting the killer question to Alabama’s Katie Britt.

Less crucially but still worth including, her South Carolina counterpart Tim Scott very nearly referred to “President Chump” while discussing the same subject, perhaps revealing his own concealed resentment after being overlooked for a job, despite his huge efforts on the campaign trail stumping on Trump’s behalf.

Speaking of the United States’s northern neighbor, the president-elect hosted a gathering of conservative Canadians at his Florida estate over the weekend, attended by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Jordan Peterson and Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, among others, to support his ludicrous ambition of incorporating their country.

In a post on X, Smith nevertheless placed an emphasis on Canadian “independence” and the importance of her homeland’s energy exports as she wrote: “The United States and Canada are both proud and independent nations with one of the most important security alliances on earth and the largest economic partnership in history.

“We need to preserve our independence while we grow this critical partnership for the benefit of Canadians and Americans for generations to come.”

Which does not sound like an emphatic “yes please” to me.

Canada’s outgoing prime minister reiterated on Sunday that his country would not give up sovereignty and join the United States, the latest surreal example of a world leader being forced to respond seriously to the unserious stated aspirations of the incoming president and his allies.

“That’s not going to happen. It’s just a non-starter,” he told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki.

“Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian.”

One more line on Newsom, who is having to battle the spread of misinformation as well as the fires.

In his latest post on X, Elon Musk’s own platform, he accuses the tech boss of “encouraging looting” after the billionaire shared posts that claimed the politician had “decriminalized” it.

“Stop encouraging looting by lying and telling people it’s decriminalized. It’s not,” Newsom wrote in reply to one of the billionaire’s retweets.

“It’s illegal – as it always has been. Bad actors will be arrested and prosecuted.”

The city’s mayor Karen Bass said over the weekend she had had “a positive response” from the president-elect’s camp about him paying a visit to the disaster zone to comfort the afflicted, rather than simply berating the official response from a safe distance, although no date has yet been announced.

Governor Newsom has meanwhile been continuing to push back against Trump’s false claims about his state’s reservoirs, a taste of what the next four years are likely to be like for the entire world, if his first term in the Oval Office was anything to go by.

Here’s some further response from the governor to the “delusional” commander-in-chief.

Also speaking to Fox News yesterday, Keith Kellogg, the president-elect’s nominee as envoy to Ukraine rowed back on his boss’s repeated promises on the campaign trail to end the war in the region “on day one”, giving himself a much more generous timeframe.

Here’s a handy montage of all the times Trump promised an instant resolution on the conflict.