Trump and his deputies wield power with ‘macho’ hand

WASHINGTON – He courted young, angry men during his presidential campaign. Now, Mr Donald Trump is back in the White House, where he and his acolytes are applying what they see as a decidedly masculine stamp on all they do.

Seeking a return to traditional gender norms, the new administration is making a big show of centring men – from Mr Elon Musk declaring on his social media platform X that “testosterone rocks” to

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth

doing push-ups to redefining government acronyms from a male perspective.

The push goes well beyond the performative, with the fist-pumping Mr Trump moving to sign executive orders

eroding healthcare access for transgender people

and declaring the country will recognise only two genders – men and women – in his first days in office.

Mr Musk, Mr Trump’s top donor and most powerful ally, whom the President has tapped to lead government cuts and, specifically, to

slash programmes targeting racism and inequality

, has repeatedly been at the vanguard of the push to make America manly again.

The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss on Feb 12 warned of what he said were risks facing men from policies that seek to combat discrimination.

In a video conference, he offered the bizarre-sounding suggestion that an artificial intelligence-based program designed to promote “diversity at all costs” could even “decide that there were too many men in power and execute them. So problem solved”.

New Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, who has criticised the presence of women in combat roles and vowed to bring “warrior culture” back, on Feb 14 shared photos of himself jogging and exercising with US troops on a snowy path in Poland.

Mr Hegseth, a military veteran, said he had done five series of 47 push-ups – a reference to Mr Trump as the 47th American president.

The Trump administration has even imposed a male-centric stamp on some government acronyms.

A warning system for pilots known as Notam, or Notice to Air Missions, has been changed officially to “Notice to Airmen”.

Nostalgic patriarchy

There is a method to all this maleness, experts say.

“The emphasis on a rigid gender binary is an outgrowth of a nostalgic patriarchy that wants to return to a mid-20th century understanding of gender relations, with white, heterosexual men at the pinnacle of a hierarchical identity pyramid,” said Dr Karrin Anderson, a communications professor at Colorado State University.

Mr Trump, of course, is at the heart of the movement.

Shortly after his return to power on Jan 20, the President ordered an end to passports with a gender-neutral “X” option and moved to restrict gender transition procedures for people under the age of 19.

The 78-year-old billionaire, who has promised to “protect” women “whether the women like it or not”, also signed an order

banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports events

.

At the signing event, he surrounded himself with women and young girls.

His administration even went so far as to scrub all references to transgender and queer people from the National Park Service-administered website for

a monument to the 1969 Stonewall riots

, a foundational moment in the struggle for LGBTQ rights.

The approach can take on a religious hue, with Mr Trump not averse to presenting himself as a providential emissary from God. Newly confirmed Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr compared the President on Feb 13 to “a man on a white horse” arriving at a gallop to save America.

‘Healthy masculinity’

“The revitalisation of American masculinity is our nation’s most pressing need,” Mr Jim Daly of conservative evangelical group Focus on the Family said in January.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, he said that Mr Trump, like conservative US president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, was promoting what he called “healthy masculinity”.

With Mr Reagan’s portrait hanging in the Oval Office, it has been under the gaze of the former Western movie actor that Mr Trump deploys his thick black marker to sign orders that, Dr Anderson says, confirm his muscular approach to power.

“By bypassing Congress and flouting constitutional checks and balances, Trump demonstrates his might by exercising masculinised, autocratic authority rather than engaging in collaborative, democratic decision-making,” she said,

Mr Trump 2.0 is not entirely an old boys club, however.

While the Republican President has named a male-dominated Cabinet, he has brought in more women than during his first term, some in strategic positions.

His new chief of staff Susie Wiles – whom he calls “the ice maiden” for her coolness under fire – is the first woman in that influential post. AFP