Josh Hafner

USA TODAY

Maybe the swamp will just drain itself?

President Donald Trump is shedding a slew of positions he flaunted on the campaign trail last year, with the New York billionaire turning his ear to — surprise! — advisers from the world of Wall Street over nationalist folk hero and (for now) strategist Steve Bannon.

Trump's administration changed tunes on Russia, China, NATO, the Ex-Im Bank, the national debt and that whole "America First" thing, all in a week.

Who'da thunk a billionaire living in a tower of gold and crystal would forgo campaign promises that appeal to the common man?

It's OnPolitics Today: USA TODAY's politics newsletter that is not entirely surprised. Subscribe here.

Trump's policy whiplash

Our own David Jackson offers an in-depth rundown of Trump's pivots aplenty.

After swearing he'd call China a currency manipulator on "Day One" of his presidency, Trump refused to do so with the Wall Street Journal. “They’re not currency manipulators,” he said. He went soft on NATO, too, yesterday: "I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete."

Trump once claimed he would do away with America's nearly $20 trillion debt by the end of his presidency. His budget director recently said "that was hyperbole." The Ex-Im Bank, which Trump once decried as "unnecessary," was this week "a very good thing."

And Trump's "America First" doctrine took a sudden shift last Thursday after he authorized a missile strike in Syria — a move he criticized Barack Obama for considering in 2013. With that now comes tensions with Syria's ally, Russia, and Vladimir Putin, whom Trump praised during his campaign. America's relations with the nuclear power "may be at an all-time low," Trump said.

No worries though, gang. He's sure it will "work out fine."

Today in bombs

The 'Mother of All Bombs' drops: "The U.S. military dropped one of its most powerful bombs — a massive 21,000-pound munition nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs" — on an Islamic State tunnel complex in Afghanistan on Thursday," Jim Michaels and Tom Vanden Brook reported. "It marked the first time it has been used in combat and reflected the growing flexibility of the Pentagon to wage war."

18 accidentally bombed in Syria: "An airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria mistakenly killed 18 soldiers from a U.S.-backed rebel force battling the Islamic State, the military said Thursday."

Japan warns of North Korean chemical warfare: " Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Thursday that North Korea might be capable of firing a missile loaded with sarin nerve gas toward Japan."

Syria president calls chemical attack fake: "Syrian President Bashar Assad said an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed at least 86 people last week was a "fabrication" to justify a U.S. military strike."

Kitchen in Trump's 'Winter White House' had 13 violations

In lighter news: Florida health inspectors dinged the kitchen in Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in January, just days before a visit from Japan's prime minister, the Miami Herald reported. Raw meats stored too warmly, busted coolers and fish that had forgone parasite destruction made up the more serious errors.

Trump himself paid more mind to the kitchen in years past, the newspaper reported. There were two violations in 2015. The next year, as Trump's continued campaigning, violations spiked to 11.

Elsewhere in politics today: