This Tuesday he celebrates one year at the helm of the White House, in what is his second stage as president of the United States. Despite the 365-day shoot, the crushing days of crazy ideas and bullying planetary, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand what is on his mind. He has not only come to reverse Democratic policies, as promised, but also to turn the balances, certainties and limits of the world upside down. In 2026 it promises to go even further. There has not been a president so unpredictable in history.
Unpredictable… and brutal, unorthodox, . The Republican is quite an informative challenge, both because of the depth of his proposals and the way in which he turns them into facts, also because of the means he uses to make his announcements and his relationship with the press, the enemy, in his eyes.
The first thing missing in a flood is drinking water, as Miguel Ángel Aguilar would say, so in the midst of the wave of information generated by Trump, a pause, a context, an explanation are increasingly necessary. To help us better understand the US and its president, he is born today. the new project of , in which its correspondent in Washington, Sara Canals (Andorra, 1990), sharpens the focus and “seeks to look into the stories that the political news does not address, but that reveal the complexity of day-to-day what happens there”, as defined by the Grupo Prisa station chain.
“The intrahistory of the largest power center on the planet”
The idea is to take the listener by the hand on “a sound journey that dismantles the idea that power resides only in the Oval Office.” “Through chronicles, interviews and everyday situations, A White House “delves into the corridors, the streets and the lives of those who live with power to address, from different angles, the intra-history of the largest center of power on the planet.”
To explain the Trump era, “press conferences, institutional noise and spotlights” are not enough, but Canals, who has been in the country for three years now, intends to “listen to those who do not appear in the headlines: migrant families, invisible officials, second-level advisors, disbelieving voters, activists, neighbors, workers and even tourists who come and go without fully understanding what is happening there.”
“This presidency is being so intense and the US generates so much information flow that we are sometimes left with only the breaking newswith purely current news. I felt that I needed to tell something more, to give space to those voices that do not sound on a daily basis and that explain a lot about this presidency and about the protagonists who are benefiting or who are suffering because of what is happening here,” explains the journalist in conversation with El HuffPost, regarding its new format.
The fact that following this president every day and from the White House, “with the access that we journalists who live in Washington have to the press room or the outside gardens of the White House” helps to be close to the New York magnate, but he wanted an extra, “to tell the current situation but from another point of view, to tell people the details, the anecdotes, those curiosities that we also see on a daily basis and due to the daily frenzy they are left off the air.”
It is not just telling the ins and outs, like but to add the amplifier of society, which is who lives alongside the sound set by Trumpist policies. It will be done in fortnightly installments, lasting between 10 and 15 minutes each, but with “flexibility” to accommodate in-depth debates or powerful interviews that arise.
anything can happen
Canals, a reporter also in Washington for Telecinco and Cuatro, has been able to experience the end of the Democratic president’s term, the elections that elevated Trump and his first months (which seem like centuries), and confirms that there are notable differences between the two leaders. The challenges of getting up early to work for Spanish media are the same, as is the pressure of covering the most powerful country in the world, but there is more: “if everything is unpredictable because it is such a large and varied country, with Trump it is even more so,” he summarizes.
“I get up on Mondays and see, of course, the weekly agenda that the White House has of presidential activities, but you know that at any moment there could be a crisis or demonstrations at some point, there could be a bankruptcy of the medium-sized banks in Silicon Valley, right? And that generates consequences throughout the country,” he exemplifies.
“Anything can happen, it doesn’t just depend on the president, but obviously with Trump unpredictability is the order of the day. You have an idea of what the day has in store for us, but hey, we have to be very flexible to adapt to information priorities. That’s why this podcast will help us focus on other important things, so that they don’t get lost along the way,” he says. Although Trump “monopolizes almost everything,” it is a professional obligation to go further, “get away from the center of power and look for stories.”
Because the Republican has such a capacity for influence and such power of decision that, really, he is altering the daily lives of Americans. “Trump is taking over, for example, everything that is culture. He is influencing the content of the museums, the shows that are held here in Washington, and this is little told because, in the end, there is news that is much more important,” laments Canals.
After three years in the area, he has noticed “a lot” the change in the street between the two presidencies, especially being in the capital, “mostly democratic, liberal.” You see it in your circles of friends or on the streets. He focuses on one detail: “since the Republicans have come to power, many stickers have begun to appear that some group creates – and that I could give for one of my episodes – about the relationship between Trump and the subject.
Or you see, “just yesterday”, one of those toilets that they put on the street with a sticker that said The Donald J. Trump Memorial Center, a nod to the president’s mania for naming everything after him, from a fleet for the Army to buildings named after other presidents.
“Among my friends there is a lot of sadness. Not all of them are Democrats, but those who are… it is not a good time for them,” he acknowledges. “I have friends who are very linked to the world of culture. One of them performed in the Washington gay choir and because of Trump they canceled their showa show that they had been doing for more than 20 years,” he explains.
In the end, he lives in a city “so marked by the United States Government, small at heart, that what happens in the White House has a tremendous impact on the streets.” All you have to do is look at the , which is still here. “We have gotten used to it. Going out shopping and running into three national guards is not normal, but we have normalized it, when Washington is relatively safe, except for some neighborhoods.” “You greet them and they are friendly. But it is super curious,” confesses the informant.
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before boarding Air Force One to depart for Washington, at Palm Beach International Airport (Florida), on January 19, 2026.
An irreversible change?
Are those that Trump is applying irreversible changes? There are those who still, with hope, say that in four years neither the US nor the world can completely change, that after it there will be room for maneuver. For the SER correspondent, who recognizes the complexity of the matter and assumes that there is no crystal ball with this president, we must be realistic and understand that he is “very disruptive and is altering, and has done so since day one.”
“On an international level, I think nothing will be the same,” he predicts. “What he is doing is irreversible, it also has a domino effect in all regions of the world, in all leaders. And at the national level, here it is very much felt, in democratic cities, his entire immigration policy… There, too, the impact is high and can be irreversible. There are people who end up in prisons in Salvador and who will no longer be able to return here, for example,” he indicates.
Unless there is “a very important setback” in the legislative elections next November (where citizens traditionally give a warning to the ruling party), he believes that “we are going to continue with this trend” of “hostility and authority” with which he is presiding over the country, until he meets his objectives.
And yet, remember that “it is also true that with a new president things change.” “This was seen very clearly with the change of the first presidency from Trump to Biden and now the presidency from Biden to Trump is even more drastic.” It is expected, therefore.
Do you have to tell everything everything you say?
Canals also raises a professional debate about how journalists approach the Trump era: “Are we making too much of a voice for him? Every time he does or says something, it needs to be told?” It’s complicated, he confesses, because sometimes you don’t know if it’s good to give him a loudspeaker when what he does is insult or lie. “On the other hand, it is the fact that he is the president of the United States… Everything he says has an impact,” he assumes.
Yes, he has noticed, at least at an editorial level, that there is no longer the need to replicate everything the president says, because it is giving him a voice, but there is a need to report critically, from pedagogy and civility, to highlight it if necessary. It emphasizes how complicated it is for a reporter to say clearly that the leader of the free world is lying, when it is assumed that his data and statements should be believed at face value.
“The exercise of fact-check It’s a challenge. You have to do it constantly. All politicians can obviously exaggerate or lie, right? This is politics. But lying so deliberately becomes uncomfortable. It seems strange to me to have to qualify an entire president all the time. This is not politics,” he says. A situation that he describes as “atypical” and “surreal”, which requires a greater context, which is what the SER now proposes to provide.
The viral question
Canals not only tells news, but has starred in it: in her first stay inside the Oval Office, next to Trump’s desk, she wanted to ask him about the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, enrolled in the Freedom Flotilla heading to Gaza, but he interrupted her, launching a phrase that became the viral of the day, on October 7, 2025.
“The truth is, a day to remember as a journalist. I at least had the dream of one day entering the Oval Office, so iconic and so emblematic, where you can step into history. With Biden I couldn’t, so that was the first time. And the truth is that it is a quite impressive moment, because in the end we are a very small group of journalists who are there with him and that allows you to be able to interact with the president,” he details.
The press is usually on the White House lawn when Trump comes and goes from his helicopter, in case he deigns to address them, but there are usually many of them and they have little chance of being attended to. That was something else. “It’s a very solemn moment, which is imposing. I saw it, I’m not going to lie, with a certain nervousness, because you have that doubt, seeing Trump’s record and his relationship with the press, how it will go for you.” It refers to whether he is going to ridicule you or make fun of your accent or your origin or attack you for whatever reason.
“The truth is that he cut me off. He went to hear the name of Greta Thunberg and the question cut me off directly. Then I was also able to ask him about Lula da Silva. As a journalist, understand the character and strategically calculate the way in which you ask so that this does not happen to you again,” he acknowledges.
A “day to remember” in the exhausting task of telling Trump to the world.
