The 50 most absurd things Donald Trump did in his first two years in office •

Sitting at the table in the Bliss Studio over lunch yesterday, in the middle of a conversation about this and that, we suddenly found ourselves talking about Donald Trump.

Every presidency produces episodes that seem impossible to predict. And yet, in that moment, as one of us said one thing and then someone else said another, we realised that Trump’s second presidency has produced so many absurd events that they almost escape our grasp, so random, constant and unprecedented are they.

Seriously: in these first two years, Trump’s second presidency (deliberately, as we will soon see in a dedicated article) has been marked by a constant, almost daily stream of decisions, statements and executive orders that swing between the serious and the surreal. Structured in such a way as to make it hard to tell government policy apart from the entertainment of films such as Sasha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator.

And so we decided to catalogue every episode that, documented and verifiable, belongs to a category that is hard to classify: events that would take longer to explain than the events themselves lasted.

In no particular order, what has happened during Trump’s second term so far

1. He officially renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” for all US federal purposes, also proclaiming a “Gulf of America Day”. The rest of the world, however, still calls it the Gulf of Mexico.

2. He ordered the restoration of the name Mount McKinley in place of Denali, the traditional Indigenous name that Obama had made official in 2015.

3. He signed an executive order against paper straws, calling them “non-functional”. In various public statements he has claimed that they break and, on occasion, explode.

4. He ordered the Treasury to stop producing the penny, noting that it costs more than a cent to make. The penny did in fact reach its final circulating mintage in November 2025.

5. He signed an order entitled “Make America’s Showers Great Again”, to increase water pressure in American home showers. The crusade later extended to taps, dishwashers, toilets, urinals and washing machines.

6. He designated English as the sole official language of the United States at federal level, and tightened English proficiency requirements for professional truck drivers.

7. He signed an order entitled “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry”. The phrase “beautiful clean coal” has become official administration terminology. In other words, coal that is beautiful and clean. A coal industry group celebrated him as the “undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal”.

8. He revived the National Garden of American Heroes project: a garden of patriotic statues with the aim of installing 250 sculptures of “American heroes” selected by the administration.

9. He signed “Make America Beautiful Again”, an order for the care of parks and public spaces, and mandated the return of classical and traditional architecture as the preferred style for all new federal buildings.

10. He signed “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, an order to purge the Smithsonian museums of narratives deemed “divisive” or carrying “improper ideology”.

11. He announced a purge of the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, appointed himself chairman, and the board he had chosen voted to add his name to the building. A federal judge later blocked the renaming attempt, sparking a series of protests and public disavowals from artists and performers.

12. He publicly complained about his portrait in the Colorado State Capitol, calling it “distorted”. The portrait was removed following the complaints. The White House then donated a new official portrait to replace it.

13. He brought the famous red Diet Coke button back to the Oval Office, one of the most photographed details of his first term.

14. He claimed to have personally persuaded Coca-Cola to use “real” cane sugar in the American version of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola did subsequently announce a cane sugar version for the US market.

15. He turned the White House South Lawn into a Tesla showroom, with Elon Musk in attendance. He chose a red Tesla and said he would buy it, while admitting he is not allowed to drive. Official photographs showed sheets that looked like sales sheets, with prices starting from “$299/month or $35K”.

16. He described the violence against Tesla vehicles and dealerships as “domestic terrorism”, promising that those responsible would go “through hell”.

17. During Inter Miami’s official visit to the White House, he turned the meeting with Leo Messi into an impromptu talk show, asking the guests “Messi or Pelé?”. Messi presented him with a pink ball as the delegation’s official gift.

18. He called Giorgia Meloni a “beautiful young woman” during a public appearance. He then claimed that Meloni had “begged” to be photographed with him at the G7. Meloni denied it, and an international row ensued.

19. In his inaugural address he promised to plant the American flag on Mars.

20. He posted on his official channels an AI-generated image depicting him dressed as the Pope, complete with white papal vestments. After the criticism, he dismissed the image as “a joke”.

21. After Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, he made her a personal target. Having written “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”, he went on to insult her again, claiming she was no longer “hot”, and even mocked her for the boos she received at the Super Bowl.

22. He had the White House Rose Garden paved over, replacing the lawn with a large stone surface in a patio/Mar-a-Lago style, and had new flagpoles installed on the north and south lawns.

23. He reposted on his own channels a video presenting the so-called “MedBeds”, the subject of a conspiracy theory claiming these beds can cure almost any disease within minutes.

24. He proposed a gigantic “Independence/Triumphal Arch” in Washington: a commemorative arch around 250 feet tall, taller than the Lincoln Memorial and the Arc de Triomphe, conceived for the United States’ 250th anniversary, with statues, eagles and gilded decorations.

25. He told a public audience that his uncle had spoken about the young Unabomber at MIT. Theodore Kaczynski did not study at MIT: he attended Harvard and then Michigan. The story’s timeline did not add up.

26. He rambled at length about windmills, claiming that they drive whales mad, kill them and ruin the landscape. He has repeated variations of this claim on several official occasions.

27. In front of senior military commanders he improvised a long digression on how to walk down stairs properly, complete with a gestural and verbal rendition of the rhythm “bop, bop, bop” (perhaps an indirect dig at former President Biden, guilty, in his view, of not being athletic enough).

28. He said he had kept the “original” 2025 FIFA Club World Cup trophy in the Oval Office, claiming that Infantino had given it to him “for ever”, while winners Chelsea had reportedly been handed a replica.

29. White House doctors reportedly listed Trump at 6’3” (1.91 m) / 224 lb (101 kg) / 4.8% body fat. The report has not been denied, although it sounds rather surreal: 5% body fat is a figure for a bodybuilder in competition prep or a professional athlete.

30. He claimed to have taken a highly difficult “cognitive test” and scored 30/30, which to him was a sign of “considered extreme intelligence”. He also maintained that it was his fourth perfect test: “120 correct answers out of 120”. The trouble is that it was not an IQ-style intelligence test but the Montreal Cognitive Assessment: a screening for possible signs of dementia. So 30/30 indicates normal cognitive function, not “extreme intelligence”.

31. He signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, described by commentators as a kind of “digital Fort Knox” for cryptocurrencies. Then, in a later announcement that moved markets instantly, he named XRP, Solana and Cardano as part of a strategic digital asset reserve, placing highly speculative altcoins alongside the state’s institutional reserves.

32. He launched his own memecoin, $TRUMP, and hosted a private dinner with himself for the largest buyers, some of whom reportedly spent millions of dollars to secure a seat at the table. According to his 2025 financial disclosures, Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto and blockchain activities

33. He had a government portal opened to release declassified files on UFOs/UAPs, promising “unprecedented transparency”: documents, videos, photos and reports of glowing orbs, spinning discs and unexplained sightings, but no official evidence of aliens.

34. He claimed personal credit for peace between Russia and Ukraine, even though negotiations were still ongoing and no agreement had been signed when he made the statements. Besides that war, he says he has stopped eight others, including one between “Azerbaijan and Albania”, which never happened (he confused Albania with Armenia). He has repeatedly demanded the Nobel Peace Prize for these achievements.

35. He proposed that Canada become the 51st state of the United States. It was not a joke: he repeated the proposal on several official occasions.

36. He repeatedly revived the idea of acquiring Greenland, this time through public statements, diplomatic pressure on Denmark and the threat of tariffs.

37. He raised the possibility of retaking control of the Panama Canal, claiming that it is run by China and that the US paid for its construction.

38. He signed an executive order to abolish birthright citizenship (jus soli), contradicting the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The measure was immediately blocked by the federal courts.

39. He declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico and deployed troops. He then described the operations as “the largest deportation in American history”, based on figures later disputed by fact-checkers.

40. He pardoned hundreds of people convicted over the events of 6 January 2021, including individuals convicted of aggravated assault on police officers.

41. He signed an order to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time, exactly repeating what he did in his first term.

42. He turned the White House South Lawn into a sports arena: first a motocross/freestyle motocross demonstration with Travis Pastrana and other riders on the South Lawn, then the UFC Freedom 250 event, with an octagon set up in front of the White House for his eightieth birthday and the celebrations of the United States’ 250th anniversary.

43. He appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his anti-vax views, as Health Secretary. Kennedy then launched reviews of federal vaccination programmes, triggering a resurgence of measles in the country. He later claimed to have snorted cocaine off toilet seats for years, and that this proves he is invincible.

44. He ordered the dismantling of USAID, the federal agency for international development aid, using procedures the courts later challenged. He then also shut down the Department of Education by executive order.

45. He created DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) as a para-governmental body entrusted to Elon Musk, with formally unregulated access to federal payment systems. In February 2025 the DOGE spokesperson published on X a list of federal Treasury codes, some of them linked to national security systems.

46. He imposed tariffs of 145% on China and 25% on Canada and Mexico, plus blanket 10% tariffs on almost all trading partners, triggering retaliation and a crisis in global financial markets. He then suspended some of the tariffs for 90 days, sending markets rebounding. The suspension did not apply to China.

47. He sent a formal letter to the WHO to begin the process of withdrawing the United States from the organisation, repeating what he did in his first term.

48. He announced a gigantic ballroom at the White House, connected to the East Wing: a project of around 8,360 m², involving demolition, enormous costs, security modifications and works on the surrounding area, to the point of physically reshaping one of the most symbolic areas of Washington.

49. During a briefing with senior intelligence officials, he asked in front of the cameras why crime statistics were not more favourable to his narratives, visibly embarrassing the officials present.

50. But above all, he created a “Presidential Walk of Fame” at the White House featuring portraits of former presidents, but in place of Joe Biden’s photo he had an image of an autopen signing his name hung up.

A closing note

Reading this list as a record of social mores would be reductive, and reading it as a political indictment would fall outside the scope of this article.

We will explore this in more depth in a dedicated issue of “Fatto Bene”, but one interesting point is worth raising here. Trump’s political agenda includes withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and a strategy of deliberate isolation. Yet when all this is mixed with the war on straws and the UFC, the reader (indeed, the voter) soon loses the ability to gauge the weight of individual decisions. Everything is processed at the same speed, with the same attention, in the same feed.

Brands and organisations that govern their own communication know that the surest way to lose the public’s attention on what matters is to fill the space with what doesn’t. When the noise passes a certain level, the signal simply stops getting through. And this list is, among other things, an unintentional experiment in how much noise a presidency can produce before collective attention stops distinguishing the signal.

The result is profound indifference, and indeed hilarity, even towards the most damaging things that can be pursued.