The Trump administration has done some breathtakingly appalling things. But its latest effort is gobsmacking.

The US Coast Guard has ruled that it will no longer classify swastikas, nooses and the Confederate Flag as hate symbols believing them to be “potentially divisive”.

Apparently, an emblem of the genocidal murder of six million Jews along with other groups and the deaths of more than 400,000 US troops who died fighting in the WWII is not definitively divisive. When the Washington Post queried the Coast Guard about the policy Coast Guard spokeswoman Jennifer Plozai said she disagreed with the Post’s reporting but that “we will be reviewing the language.”

The Coast Guard’s acting Commandant, Admiral Kevin Lunday, said that such symbols “and other extremist or racists imagery violate our core values and are treated with the seriousness they warrant under current policy”

It’s all a bit confusing because a February 2023 Coast Guard policy was unequivocal on the issue while the November 2025 policy says the symbols constitute a “potential” problem. The 2023 policy came with images of the symbols which were potentially problems suggesting that staff needed pictures to work out what was OK or not.

This is all less about actual changes in policy – we hope at least – but part of a generalised illiteracy and ignorance in the Trump world. For instance, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been given $US 30 billion to get on with Trump’s favourite policy. The only problem is that those most attracted to the job opportunities share the fitness and literacy abilities of the President.

The Atlantic reported that the latest data from the ICE training academy show that a third of the new recruits failed an easy personal fitness test (15 push ups, 32 sit ups and run 1.6 miles in 14 minutes. NBC News reported ICE had placed new recruits into the training program before finding out that the recruits had failed drug testing, had disqualifying criminal background or didn’t meet physical or academic requirements. Almost half of the recruits failed an open book test.

This is hardly surprising – after all, along with Trump, the share of Americans who are obese – defined by the Centre for Disease Control Prevention as having a BMI of 30 or more was 40.3% in 2023 but that there had been no fall in the morbidly obese category.

Meanwhile, while Trump is using the Presidency as a means of enriching himself and his family while his oversight of institutions, such as the Kennedy Centre is having the opposite effect.

As for the first – personal enrichment – New Yorker reporter David D. Kirkpatrick did a deep dive into his wide-ranging use of the presidency to enrich himself and his family:

“Selling access to himself and his Cabinet at Mar-a-Lago, playing fast and loose with campaign funds and PAC money, running a private online store selling campaign merch, wheeling and dealing with filthy rich Persian Gulf countries in exchange for presidential support and influence (don’t forget that private jet from Qatar), a licensing deal to put the Trump name on a massive development in Vietnam in exchange for lower tariffs, squeezing or suing corporations to get big donations to his presidential foundation, plus Truth Social, crypto, tokens, meme coins … The guy is shameless” he said.

Kirkpatrick’s running total of how much Trump and his family have profited by leveraging the power of the presidency for their personal gain is $3.4 billion and counting.

A November 14 Forbes headline “Donald Trump has had business dealings with the Saudis for decades. The big money arrived after he became president.” echoed Kirkpatrick’s research. The Forbes’ story said: “Trump offloaded the Plaza Hotel to a Saudi prince in 1995 and [sold] a set of condos to the Saudi government in 2001. Trump’s ties to the Arab nation grew stronger in the wake of the Khashoggi murder, however, especially after his first term in office ended. Since then, the president and his family struck at least nine deals with Saudi investors, pushing millions into the president’s golf properties, tens of millions into his licensing business and billions into private-equity funds, according to Forbes calculations. In 2024 alone, Trump and his extended family collected an estimated $50 million from deals connected to Saudi Arabia.”

While Trump and family are getting richer (they were never really, really rich by US standards despite their protestations) the US is getting deeper and deeper into debt.

The IMF forecasts that Donald Trump is on course to push US debt levels above those of Italy and Greece by the end of the decade after wide-ranging tax cuts and increased defence spending., according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts.

The IMF predicts the US will see its debts climb from 125% to 143% of annual income by 2030, while Italy’s will flatline at about 137%.Greece is on track to cut the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) from 146% to 130% over the same period. According to IMF data, Athens has tackled a budget overspend that raced to 210% as a proportion of GDP in 2020.

Meanwhile – in another indication of Trump’s business record his takeover of the Kennedy Centre and self-appointment as Chair is busily destroying that much loved institution, The Washington Post said ticket sales had dropped to 43% and audiences were being bolstered with comps given away to staff members and media. According to spending data drawn from 40 million credit and debit cards by Consumer Edge less than half as much was spent on tickets in 2025 compared with every year since 2018 (except for the COVID lock down in 2020).

Trump loves gold and bling. But his true ability seems to be in transmutation – making gold into dross.