‘Everything, everywhere, all at once’: what will Trump 2.0 unleash?
Share:
On Monday the 47th president will be sworn in – and critics say Trump’s second term will be more radical than his first. Come 12pm on Monday, on what is expected to be a bone-chillingly cold day, it will be done. Donald Trump, a convicted criminal described as a fascist by some who worked for him, will placed his hand on a Bible and and again be sworn in as president of the United States.
![[Man in silhouette speaks into mic]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/91322c7cb9820cd53abd4e9e0c7a278e8c5fd89c/0_0_5248_3504/master/5248.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The 45th and 47th president will then deliver an inaugural address that sets out his agenda for the next four years. His speech eight years ago became synonymous with the phrase “American carnage”. This time he may promise a new “golden age” of America. But the content and tone of his remarks will be dissected for clues to what Trump 2.0 has in store for America and the world.
Within hours Trump, 78, who joked that he would be a “dictator” on “day one”, is expected to unleash a blitz of executive orders and actions including mass deportations, pardons for 6 January 2021 rioters and aggressive tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. The phrase “shock and awe” will not do it justice, according to one Trump ally.
“I tell people, ‘Shock and awe was a [20]17 concept,’” Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist, said at an event hosted by the Politico website in Washington this week. “Days of thunder, I think, are gonna be the concepts starting next Monday. And I think these days of thunder starting next week are going to be incredibly, incredibly intense.”.
The first hundred days of Trump’s first term were defined by chaos. An executive order to ban visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries led to pandemonium at airports. A rushed attempt to repeal and replace Barack Obama’s healthcare law flopped in the House of Representatives. National security adviser Mike Flynn was forced to resign for misleading the vice-president, Mike Pence, over his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
