Washington: Donald Trump sat at the Resolute Desk signing executive orders for the cameras and taking questions from a small pool of journalists clumped in the Oval Office. The orders traversed his pardons for the January 6 rioters, the ceasefire in the Middle East, immigration, tariffs, energy, Greenland – you name it.

“Does Biden ever do news conferences like this?” Trump asked the reporters midway through his musings about TikTok. “How many news conferences, Peter, has he done like this?”

Peter Doocy from Fox News duly replied: “Like this? Zero.”

The four Donalds: Trump takes the oath at the US Capitol, speaks off the cuff outside the ceremony, takes the stage at the Capitol One Arena and returns to the Oval Office.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

They might be right about that. It’s difficult to picture Biden – certainly lately – casually freewheeling his thoughts about Gaza (“a phenomenal location”), whether he might send US special forces into Mexico to hunt down cartels (“stranger things have happened”) and the pledge to end the Ukraine war on the first day in office (“this is only half a day, I have another half a day left”).

The calm, chatty, discursive and, above all, confident Trump we witnessed in the Oval Office after the day of ceremonies and speeches was different to the Trumps we saw earlier.........

© WA Today