Donald Trump uses Easter to drop message of doom for words of hope.

Donald Trump uses Easter to drop message of doom for words of hope.

“My fellow Americans, this is a season of great hope,” is how Donald Trump begins this week’s White House address.

Easter, he continues, is a time when “we are grateful for the tremendous blessings of this land, our home”.

After campaigning on a message of fear and delivering an inaugural address remembered for its depiction of “American carnage” – all rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones – the US president sounds like a man reborn, using the holiday weekend to deliver his most optimistic vision yet.

“From the beginning, America has been a place that has cherished the freedom of worship,” said a president who has still not been spotted at church in Washington. “That is the promise the first settlers saw in our vast continent—and it is the promise that our bravest warriors have protected for all of our citizens in centuries since, a long time ago.”

It comes at the end of one of his most positive fortnights in office.