US election: Republicans anxious about Donald Trump’s pre-exit ‘bucket list’

Concern growing after president scoped out Iranian sites for military action

Donald Trump arrives to deliver an update on "Operation Warp Speed" in the Rose Garden of the White House.
(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Senior members of the Republican Party are growing increasingly worried about how Donald Trump will spend his final weeks in the Oval Office, as the outgoing president prepares a series of grand gestures to mark his impending departure.

Fears in the party that Trump is looking to build what The Times describes as a “hawkish legacy” have been fuelled by reports that he asked senior aides last week about his “options” for an attack an Iranian nuclear facility.

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Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.