We are fortunate in Britain that when governments change, the senior positions in Whitehall remain the same. The so-called Mandarins retain the collective experience of the departments, ready to serve incoming ministers from day one, and doing it apolitically. As far as I know, it works well. The Americans used to do something similar, but with far more positions. An incoming president needed to fill or confirm about 4,000 political appointments, of which about 1,200 require Senate confirmation. Trump has done that, but is going much further, shifting the guardrails further and further away from him.
He has literally fired thousands of senior civil servants, some of whom have been replaced by men and women in his own image, that is to say, people of almost total ignorance and stupidity. The upper levels of the management at the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) for example, has been decimated, and the entire 17-member committee on immunisation policy was sacked and replaced by vaccine sceptics. Thousands of positions remain unfilled.
Trump wants to dismiss Jerome Powell, the chair of the central bank, the Federal Reserve, but can’t without roiling the markets, so he’s going after Lisa Cook, a member of the interest rate-setting committee, to help him cut rates, whether a cut is warranted or not. A judge blocked her dismissal this week. The president is now trying to force out the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, for failing to 'find' evidence against Ms Cook.
This sort of thing is still going on across government, all of it totally unprecedented. But if that wasn’t bad enough, he is going after universities and media companies and comedians and TV hosts who take the mickey out of him. The most recent high-profile example is that of Jimmy Kimmel:
BREAKING: First Colbert. Now Kimmel. variety.com/2025/tv/news...— Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com) 17 September 2025 at 23:55
We are getting to the position now that when a new president is elected there will follow a near complete political churn, not only in the upper and lower echelons of government, but also in the university sector, the management of big corporations, and late-night television hosts. He and his chair of the FCC, (Federal Communications Commission - the equivalent of OFCOM) have threatened to withdraw the licenses of broadcasters who refuse to toe the line by offering fulsome praise of Donald Trump at every turn.
He is forcing America to alter its perception of reality and truth.
To give you an idea of just how deranged things have become as well as the direction of travel, you need only read the lawsuit Trump and his attorneys launched against the New York Times last week. It looks like something cooked up in a mental asylum by some disturbed inmates.
The lawsuit demands $15 billion for allegedly defaming Trump. It was filed on Tuesday and dismissed on Friday. A judge in Florida said the 85-page complaint was far too long and gave his lawyers 28 days to refile a shorter, more concise version. The document is over twice as long as the 40-page maximum, and reading it, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a joke. I would read it in that context.
A few quotes from it:
"President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history." Really?
"The [NYT] Board asserted hypocritically and without evidence that President Trump would 'defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong'.” This is actually TRUE!!
"The subject matter of this action—a malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book written by two of its reporters and three false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging articles, all carefully crafted by Defendants, with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump."
What was Trump doing when he mercilessly trashed every other candidate, Republican as well as Democrat, in three elections?
"President’s most well-known successes—in addition to his decades of magnificent real estate achievements, winning the Presidency, and then winning the Presidency again—his remarkable performance as the star of 'The Apprentice,' one of the top rated shows of all time and a trailblazer in American television. Thanks solely to President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen, 'The Apprentice' generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and remained on television for over thirteen years, with nearly 200 episodes. 'The Apprentice' represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time."
Sui generis means one of a kind, unique, and it certainly applies here. Nobody else has an ego that gigantic.
"The Times does have every intention of defaming and disparaging the world-renowned Trump brand that consumers have long associated with excellence, luxury, and success in entertainment, hospitality, and real estate, among many other industries, as well as falsely and maliciously defaming and disparaging him as a candidate for the highest office in the United States, the 45th, and now 47th President of the United States."
The complaint lists settlements reached out of court with ABC, Paramount and CBS News as evidence of his success and even reprints some of his unhinged tweets about how he forced them to apologise and pay him millions of dollars.
He is still railing about the value of Mar-a-Lago, which a judge said was worth $18 million. Trump claimed after that court case, it was actually worth $1 billion! Now he is suggesting a figure of “at least” $1.8 billion. What any of it has to do with the NYT defaming him isn't immediately obvious. It is just a massive whinge.
Paragraph 54 claims: "President Trump built much of New York City’s famed skyline, owning and operating many of the key New York landmarks," and goes on to list a few buildings he either built or refurbished. He did not build 'much' of New York's skyline, even if he thinks he did.
A few paragraphs later comes a list of books he claims to have "authored," and it's quite a list, over 20, but we all know every one was ghost written for him. Many people doubt he’s ever read a book, let alone written one.
"President Trump is a citizen of the United States, a resident of the State of Florida, the 45th President of the United States of America, and, having handily won the 2024 Presidential Election despite Defendants’ best efforts to the contrary, is the 47th President of the United States. In addition to his unprecedented political success, President Trump is universally known for his decades of remarkable business achievements, particularly at the helm of the world-renowned Trump Organization, with its worldwide portfolio of luxury real estate holdings."
"Having long established himself as a global celebrity, he then revolutionized television as the star of “The Apprentice.” President Trump continues to redefine what is possible in business and media, including with his founding, and powerful use, of the immensely successful social media platform, Truth Social."
The Apprentice is said to have been "a monumental success directly because of President Trump." Remember, it was all scripted and acted out, although Trump had difficulty reading the scripts.
And finally, what about this one:
"Indeed, the false thrust of the Book and the First Article—the twisted inversion of President Trump’s importance to 'The Apprentice'—is belied by Burnett’s and NBC’s choice of President Trump in the first place. They recognized that not just anybody could turn 'The Apprentice' into a success. Only President Trump had the necessary combination of actual business achievement, charisma, fame, personality, intellect, and instinctual comfort in front of a television audience that could drive the show to television heights."
Phew! On and on it goes, with soaring and stomach-churning sycophancy. Trump is apparently so brilliant the slightest hint of criticism of him must by definition be defamatory. That is the essence of the lawsuit.
The judge, unsurprisingly, threw it out on the grounds it was far too long - "Rule 8(e)(1) helpfully adds that 'each averment of a pleading shall be simple, concise and direct',".
In dismissing the suit, the judge wrote:
"Even assuming that each allegation in the complaint is true (of course, that is for a jury to decide and is not pertinent here; this order suggests nothing about the truth of the allegations or the validity of the claims but addresses only the manner of the presentation of the allegations in the complaint); even assuming that at trial the plaintiff offers evidence supporting every allegation in the complaint and that the evidence is accepted by the jury as fact; and even assuming that after finally 'melting' the defendants’ alleged 'iceberg of falsehoods' the plaintiff prevails for each reason alleged in the complaint — even assuming all of that — a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief."
Trump is quite insane.
