4 deeply troubling things Donald Trump did on his tenth day back in the White House

Spouting wild innuendo about the tragedy unfolding in the Potomac River, opening a new migrant detention camp in a very familiar place – and making wildly false claims about sending condoms to Gaza. Here’s what you need to know

Given the tragedy unfolding in the Potomac River, just a few minutes’ drive from the White House, you might have thought Donald Trump would see yesterday as a time for calm reflection.

Perhaps he would spend the evening speaking to experts and carefully considering how to release information about the plane crash.

But no, he decided to spout a stream of innuendo on social media – and pose a series of questions that might be better put to the Transport Secretary rather than his conspiracy theory-loving die-hard followers.

Elsewhere the volume of bonkers announcements and troubling actions was a little lower compared to previous days.

But the things he did announce were real doozies.

Here’s what you need to know.

1. Responded to the Potomac River plane crash pushing out a conspiracy theory

In the hours following the tragic plane crash in the Potomac River, the White House issued a statement saying the President had been fully briefed on the incident and would share more details later.

Later, obviously, he took to Truth Social….posting: “The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport.

“The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time.

“It is a clear night, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn.

“Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane.”

These are all questions you might think the President of the United States could ask the head of the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). Unfortunately, Mike Whitaker, the former head of the FAA, resigned on the day Trump took office. He’d been heavily criticised by Elon Musk for not approving SpaceX missions quickly enough.

No acting head of the FAA has been appointed.

Meanwhile, despite the FAA being understaffed, Trump ordered a hiring freeze on the body last week. He also disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which was formed following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to examine safety issues at airlines and airports.

Later in the evening he posted on Truth Social again: “What a terrible night this has been. God bless you all!!”

2. Scrapped the government spending freeze, just like that

As quickly as it was hamfistedly introduced, the White House canned the freeze on nearly all government grants and loans.

After 48 hours of people not unreasonably asking why Meals on Wheels was woke and whether anyone was *really* sending $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza (they weren’t) – not to mention a judge ordering that it be halted – the White House relented.

Which is good news if you get Meals on Wheels. Probably less good news if you’re one of the dozens of Republicans who stood in front of cameras and defended the freeze at length over the last couple of days.

3. But that didn’t stop him lying about the Hamas condoms again

At a bill signing, the President claimed: “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”

You don’t even need inside information to know this isn’t true, just a calculator.

USAid, an agency that among many, many other things, distributes contraceptives to places where they are difficult and expensive to obtain, buys condoms for about 5c each.

That makes a billion condoms for the 1 million or so men (and male children) who live in Gaza. So about 1,000 each, which might seem ambitious to some.

In reality, USAid spent about $7 million on condoms last year, to distribute around 137m condoms. Worldwide.

4. Opened up a migrant detention camp in Guantanamo Bay

Trump has ordered the construction of a migrant prison at the infamous US Navy base in Cuba to house up to 30,000 of “the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.

Cuba, predictably are unimpressed, and accused the US of torture and illegal detention on “occupied” land.

Explaining his reasoning, Trump said: “Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back. So we’re going to send them to Guantanamo… it’s a tough place to get out.”