For anyone who was hoping Donald Trump’s second presidency would be less of a whirlwind than the first, well… think again.
Much has happened since Mr Trump’s inauguration ceremony, from launching a meme coin; getting Google to rename the Gulf of Mexico; preparing a migrant detention centre at Guantánamo Bay; instigating sweeping tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China; seeking to bring back plastic straws; and recently accusing Volodymyr Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three”.
There’s more: Trump also shared a bizarre AI-generated video where he drank cocktails with Netanyahu in “Trump Gaza,” and he’s now “disappearing” US nationals to El Salvadorian mega-prisons.
He’s also embroiled in a messy break-up with frenemy Elon Musk, as the tech CEO makes claims about the president on social media.
Mr Trump made history for his questionable quotes during his first term in office, such as the infamous “grab them” line – among many others. And it appears he wants to add more to the list.
Here are Mr Trump’s most jaw-dropping quotes since his inauguration on January 20, 2025.
Doubles down on desire for Greenland
Since returning to office, Mr Trump has wasted no time in reiterating his desire to bring Greenland under American control – saying the Danish-governed island “is in our future”.
“If you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” he added.
Wanting to make Canada the 51st state
The president has been long been clear about his desire for Greenland but has more surprisingly targeted Canada since his term began, saying it could become the US’s 51st state.
Days before Canada’s election, Mr Trump said the country would “cease to exist” without the help of America buying its goods.
"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” he wrote on social media. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear."
The thing is, he really hasn’t backed down over this one. In May 2025, Trump was openly ridiculed on social media after he boasted that Canada is thinking about joining the United States.
In his latest tirade, Trump alleged that Canada wants to be part of a “golden dome” plan that would provide military deterence for any incoming airstrikes.
In his post, he suggested that he’d charge Canada $61 billion to join, but they’d get it for free if they became a US state.
“They are considering the offer!” he maintained, though many doubt there’s any truth in it.
To be very clear, Canadian leaders are shown no interest in giving up their sovereignty.
Appears to give an interview from a plane toilet
Q: Are you going to comply with the judge's order regarding rehiring the federal workers?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17, 2025
TRUMP: What are you talking about?
Q: The judge that ruled the govt has to rehire the fired federal workers. Do you plan to comply?
TRUMP: That's a very dangerous decision for our country pic.twitter.com/QA5rMpBijN
In a strange incident, the president seemed to somewhat hark back to the days of privy chambers by giving an interview from what looked like the bathroom on Air Force One.
“The judge that ruled the government has to rehire the fired federal workers … Do you plan to comply?” Mr Trump was asked.
“That's a very dangerous decision for our country,” he said in the bathroom doorway. No context around the interview has been provided as to why he was near his loo.
Calls George Clooney a ‘fake movie actor’
George Clooney was the target for a Trump tirade after he criticised the then presidential candidate in a New York Times op-ed. The actor had called for Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race last year to allow a younger candidate to run against the Republican.
Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social: “So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act. He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are.”
It’s unclear if Mr Trump was meaning, in calling him a “fake actor”, that Clooney’s films do not exist or he has not personally performed his roles.
Argues that the US is entitled to deport people without a trial
Donald Trump made a baseless claim that “The Congo” and Venezuela had “emptied their prisons” and their criminals were coming to the US. He said that emergency powers are needed to try to stop the so-called tide.
“We’re getting them out, and I hope we get cooperation from the courts because, you know, we have thousands of people that are ready to go out, and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” the president said.
“Look, we are getting some very bad people, killers, murderers, drug dealers, really bad people, the mentally ill, the mentally insane, they emptied out insane asylums into our country, we’re getting them out. And a judge can’t say: ‘No, you have to have a trial.’
“No, we are going to have a very dangerous country if we are not allowed to do what we are entitled to do.”
‘I thought that Zelensky would be easier’
Mr Trump appears to have defended his so-far failure to come good on his promise of securing a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia by blaming Volodymyr Zelensky for being difficult.
“I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelensky,” he said to a White House press room. “So far it’s been harder.”
“Nobody is asking Zelensky to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory,” he added on his Truth Social platform, implying that the US does see the Crimea as Russian.
“If he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”
‘I don't know much about it other than I launched it, other than it was very successful’
Mr Trump kicked off the eve of his inauguration with the launch of a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency meme coin.
The digital currency, called $TRUMP, surfaced on his social media pages and swiftly rose to the top of the cryptocurrency market. Within a day, a single coin's value soared to $75 (£56), but then dropped to $39 (£31).
Mr Trump told reporters when announcing the launch: “I don't know much about it other than I launched it, other than it was very successful.”
‘My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal’
It wouldn’t be a Mr Trump speech if he didn’t comment on the outgoing president.
Using his podium in the Capitol Rotunda to attack his predecessor, outgoing Democratic president Joe Biden, Mr Trump adopted an aggressive stance during his January 20 inaugural address.
He said: “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place.”
Gulf of America has a ‘beautiful ring’ to it
Mr Trump announced at his January news conference at Mar-a-Lago that he would rename the Gulf of Mexico to become the Gulf of America. He claimed. that cartels now control the gulf and that “it's ours”.
“We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America,” he said.
“What a beautiful name. And it's appropriate. It's appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.”
We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.
— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) January 27, 2025
However, Mexico contends that the US cannot lawfully rename the Gulf. It said the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates that a nation's sovereign territory can be extended only 12 nautical miles offshore.
Trump says he is preparing migrant detention centre at Guantánamo Bay
Mr Trump revealed on January 29 that he was overseeing the construction of a detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. He said this would house up to 30,000 unauthorised migrants.
“Today I'm also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay. Most people don't even know about it,” he said.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, then-US president George W Bush established the Guantánamo Bay detention centre in 2002 to house suspected foreign militants. Sky News reported that the facility for migrants was separate from the detention centre on the base.
Slamming the FAA’s disability recruitment programme for hiring ‘people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities’
Speaking after a midair collision between a US military helicopter and an American Airlines flight from Kansas killed all 67 aboard, Mr Trump speculated that diversity hiring may have been a factor in the disaster.
He said during a press conference on Thursday January 30: “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas.”
He claimed that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website stated that persons with disabilities such as “hearing, vision, missing, extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism” were “all qualified for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country”.
Mr Trump added: “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it,”
There is no proof that the tragedy was caused by the FAA's diversity initiatives.
‘You want me to go swimming?’
When asked about his plans to visit the crash site, Mr Trump added: “I have a plan to visit, not the site. Because you tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”
Reporter: Do you have a plan to go visit the site?
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2025
Trump: I have a plan to visit, not the site. Because you tell me, what’s the site? The water? pic.twitter.com/TytZjonqvx
‘The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too’
In an astonishing proposal that would drastically reorient the Middle East and subject a population of over a million to further displacement, Mr Trump said on Tuesday February 4, that the United States “will take over” the Gaza Strip. He said this would “possibly be with the assistance of American troops, and that the Palestinians living there should leave, in order to redevelop Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
In a joint press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr Trump said: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”
Mr Trump did not rule out the possibility of sending US soldiers to Gaza to cover a security void when asked about it.
He added: “As far as Gaza is concerned, we’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that. We’re going to take over that piece that we’re going to develop it.”
Trump says Ukraine ‘should have never started’ the war and ‘could have made a deal’ to prevent it
During a news conference at his Florida residence on February 18, Mr Trump alleged Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Mr Trump added he was “disappointed” by Ukraine's reaction to not being allowed to join talks to end the conflict, insisting it “could have made a deal” earlier.
The US president added: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren't invited.’ Well, you have been there for three years. You should have ended it three years [ago].
“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
“This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, the loss of much land and without the loss of any lives and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their side”, he added.
Following the press conference, former British defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace criticised on X (formerly Twitter) the “fake news” being spread by Trump’s administration.
He said: “Ukraine started the war..this claim is straight out of the Kremlin talking points. Russia invaded in 2014 and 2022. Putin’s amateur essay revealed it all the previous year.”
‘You’re gambling with World War Three’
Mr Trump spoke to President Zelensky in what became a heated exchange at the White House’s Oval Office on February 28.
During the spat Mr Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart: “You’re gambling with World War Three, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have.”
Mr Zelensky warned the US would “feel it in the future” if it did not continue to support the European country.
“Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem,” Mr Trump hit back.
The comments followed expectations that Ukraine would sign an agreement that would grant the US access to its rare earth minerals and other natural resources in exchange for continued support.
However, no deal was signed and Mr Zelensky and his delegation were made to leave the White House.
The remarks are just some of many made by the Republican that have sparked a social media frenzy since his return to the Oval Office earlier this year.
While many flocked to social media to voice their disbelief and support for Mr Zelensky, Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform of Mr Zelensky: “He can come back when he is ready for peace.”
Putin has gone ‘crazy’
After spending much of his presidency cosying up to the Russian president and belittling Ukraine, Trump now appears to have changed his tune.
Taking to Truth Social yet again, he accused Putin of going ‘crazy’ as the country continues claiming innocent lives through air raids in Ukraine.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” he wrote. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.”
While this appears to signal his distancing from Trump, it remains to be seen whether the US president will have a hand in attempting to end the conflict once and for all.
Trump demands an investigation into celebs supporting Kamala Harris
In yet another random bombshell that appears to have come out of nowhere, Trump has demanded an inquiry into the celebrities who endorsed Kamala Harris during her campaign.
Even though Trump won the 2024 election and defeated the Democrats, he just can’t seem to get over the fact that Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen and others would perform as part of his rival’s campaign.
Claiming without evidence that the celebrities had been paid to endorse Harris, Trump took to Truth Social yet again -- this time in capital letters to for added effect.
“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? … AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” he yelled into the online ether.
Trump apparently could end the war – but won’t
Speaking during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, where the European leader was urging him to increase pressure on Russia, Trump said that it could be better to let Russia and Ukraine “fight for a while”, rather than pursue peace.
Casting doubt on the success of the ongoing peace talks, the president said “sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart”.
Recent numbers suggest around 250,000 Russians have been killed in the conflict so far, as well as between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainians.
He also claimed that he told Putin in a conversation earlier this week that the two nations are acting like “two young children fighting like crazy in a park”.
