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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
In Silicon Valley, they move fast and break things. In Washington, they move slowly and tweak them. Lenin could have been forecasting the opening to Donald Trump’s second term when he quipped that there are decades where nothing happens and weeks when decades happen. Washington, an institutional town where respect for “regular order” binds its natives, is not equipped for the speed with which Trump has been flooding the zone in the past 20 days. How he fares in remaking the US republic in his image hinges on overwhelming America’s federal capital with shock and awe. Aside from several court-ordered stays of action, his tactics have so far been effective.
He has two unerring goals. The first is to recreate the imperial presidency that was buried in the mid-1970s after Richard Nixon’s resignation. Post-Watergate Washington passed a flurry of reforms that tied the hands of the executive branch, notably the CIA, the Department of Justice and the FBI. Trump is dissolving those restraints. The second is to make money for himself and his family. The multibillion-dollar value of the meme coins that the president and first lady Melania Trump launched shortly before his inauguration shows that is also going to plan.
Trump is a master of distraction. Whether he is blaming America’s worst air disaster in years on DEI hiring or vowing to put US boots on the ground in the Gaza strip, Trump fills the stage. The tempo is almost boringly shocking. Another three weeks of this could become shockingly boring. Either way, Trump has bandwidth dominance.
A simple catalogue of what Trump has done in his opening days would consume this column. What will endure are his aggressive moves on the so-called power ministries — the repressive arms of the state. Last month, Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend anchor, moved into the Pentagon as secretary of defence. Hegseth has already pledged to send thousands of troops to the Mexico-US border. It is surely a matter of time before troops are deployed in the hinterlands to help round up illegal immigrants for deportation.
On Wednesday, Pam Bondi, Florida’s former attorney-general, was confirmed to head the Department of Justice. She is purging the department of those who investigated Trump during Joe Biden’s presidency. Bondi has also demanded a full list of the thousands of FBI officers involved in investigating the January 6 Capitol riots — a move that has triggered FBI class lawsuits to protect their identities. She has also mothballed the DoJ’s “kleptocracy initiative”, which seized the assets of corrupt foreign actors, including Russian oligarchs’ mega yachts.
Kash Patel, a hardcore Trump loyalist, is likely to be confirmed next week as director of the FBI. The post-Watergate reforms were aimed at preventing a recurrence of J Edgar Hoover, the autocratic longtime head of the FBI. Two years ago, Patel wrote a book listing the 60 enemies who would be investigated if Trump returned to office. In Senate testimony last week, he denied any plans for retribution and said his names were simply “a glossary” (though that is another word for list). Among Patel’s targets were Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Mark Milley, the retired chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
As goes Washington, so goes the world. An imperial presidency requires a global stage. In his inauguration speech, Trump said he wanted to reoccupy the Panama Canal. Since then he has reiterated his demand to acquire Greenland from Denmark, insisted that Canada join the union, and rhapsodised about turning an ethnically-cleaned Gaza strip into a “riviera of the Middle East”. Scholars debate whether Trump is a non-interventionist, as many had until recently believed, or in reality a rule-burning unilateralist, which makes better sense of his current moves.
Either way, he is an inveterate real estate developer. His son-in-law Jared Kushner was the first to mention Gaza’s “very valuable waterfront property” almost a year ago. Trump first coveted what is assumed to be Greenland’s mineral-rich property during his first term. His history with Panama goes back 20 years and the ill-fated Trump Ocean Club in Panama City. This week Panama rebutted Washington’s announcement that US vessels would now have free passage through the canal. Denmark has also politely resisted Trump’s designs on its arctic real estate. Meanwhile, the world is getting accustomed to the novelty of an angry Canada: all the country’s political parties are now “Canada First”.
Who can separate Trump’s signal from his noise? In his inaugural speech, he vowed the equivalent of regime change. His shredding of the rule book was reinforced by the guest list, the most conspicuous of which were the world’s three richest men, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Each has donated lavishly to Trump. As the spearhead of Trump’s deep state purge, Musk is leader of that pack. The rest of the indoor gathering was largely filled with Maga henchmen and bro-casters. There was also the line up of Trump’s living predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Biden. As the former presidents and their spouses listened stony-faced to Trump’s plans for a new golden age, their isolation was glaring. Twenty iconoclastic days later, they look like Washington’s ancien regime.
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