Eight years ago, political outsider Donald Trump was sworn in as US president in front of a stunned American establishment. Four years later, he left Washington in disgrace following the violent riot at the Capitol. Yesterday, having experienced assassination attempts, a felony conviction and a rollercoaster third election campaign, he returned in triumph to the same Capitol building to take the oath of office once more. It is a narrative without parallel in presidential history.
His speech, while marginally less apocalyptic than the address he delivered at his first inauguration, was nonetheless similarly abrasive and uncompromising, laying out a litany of wrongs that he would, he claimed, immediately make right, from banning diversity policies in federal workplaces to taking back the Panama Canal.
A blizzard of executive orders has already begun, among them a state of emergency at the southern border, new measures targeting undocumented immigrants and a rolling back of environmental protections. Some of these will be largely symbolic. Others will be challenged successfully in the courts. But many will survive and adversely affect the lives of millions.
Despite months of rhetoric on the subject, there was no immediate move to impose tariffs. Indeed, it remains far from clear what the new administration’s “America First” philosophy will actually mean in practice for international trade, US military alliances or a host of other questions, not least over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
But it is an aggressive and often dark policy programme that explicitly targets political enemies, as Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden recognised with a last-minute flurry of pre-emptive pardons of potential victims such as Anthony Fauci and Liz Cheney. If fully enacted, the actions Trump has promised would undermine some of the most fundamental principles of liberal democracy.
It is also a hugely ambitious programme, which will require considerable political discipline if it is to be achieved. While the second Trump presidency will clearly be more focused than the first, chaos and incoherence remain hallmarks of his governing style. And the contradictions at the heart of Trump’s coalition of plutocrats and populists will surely erupt at some point into conflict.
As the weekend’s volte-face over TikTok showed, Trump can for the moment rely on the total subservience of his own party, and on disarray and despondency among his opponents.That will change, as it has done for so many presidents before him who came into office with grand plans and more convincing mandates than he has received. The mid-term elections are only 22 months away. The inevitable succession battle is looming. For Trump, this week is the apotheosis of his extraordinary journey. The world now waits with trepidation to see what comes next.