Well we’re in it now, aren’t we? Yesterdays first day of the most recent presidency of Donald Trump came and went as many of us expected. It was a prime example of the tech maxim of “move fast and break things”, as that’s precisely what they did right out the shoot. It was disorienting and yet at the same time, reminiscent of how so many of us felt during the first go around. Things moving so fast and so unpredictable, one moment thinking you’ve dodged a bullet, only for it to return a mere hours later.
And that folks is going to be what we’re facing for Lord knows how long. It’s dizzying to think of how much Trump and his team did on Day 1, both legal and illegal, and the sheer volume of it all leaving people shrugging at it. In normal times, if any CEO got up in front of a packed arena at a Presidential Inauguration event and gave a fascist salute not once but twice, that would consume all the oxygen in the room for weeks. But yesterday, it barely registered and we saw many in the media either try to ignore it or simply excuse it as something else.
When you look at the full scale of everything that happened yesterday, you can partially see why this would play out this way. With the zone flooded within minutes of more than two dozen executive orders, it’s easy to see how this would happen. Where do you focus? On the US leaving the World Health Organization or the Paris Climate Accord (again)? On the illegal attempt to end Birthright Citizenship at the stroke of a pen? Creating a “national emergency on energy” where none exists? How about the numerous orders involving the southern border? Or even the absurd ones, like changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico or renaming a mountain in Alaska?
Even in that summary, I’m leaving out more than a dozen other serious actions taken within mere minutes, including the pardoning of those who actively tried to overthrow the very democracy that just elected Trump this time, with violence acts including the assaulting and attacking of police officers. All of it, done just that fast, before Day 1 was even out.
To say it’s all disorienting would be an understatement. Like many things that Trump and his team did last time and appear to be bent on doing this time, that is the point of it. Look at the threats towards our home and our economy. We went on our own roller-coaster ride of anxiety yesterday which perfectly portrayed what we’re facing. In his inaugural address after swearing in without even touching the Bible he did it with (again, another thing that would have consumed us for weeks in normal times if anyone else did it), Trump didn’t utter our name directly. Nothing on tariffs, only this passing reference:
Not exactly a subtle or unimportant reference, given that the easiest way for the US to expand their territory is to march across the longest undefended border on the planet. But if that was what ended up being the full extent of what we’d face that day, I think most would have taken that as a win. In fact, some quarters of our partisan makeup were doing just that, saying that because we avoided tariffs on Day 1, they were right, and we should stop going after them. Then a few hours later, in the evening, this happened:
Yep, just as casually as anyone could, Trump throws us right back into the existential crisis we thought that maybe we had avoided, if only for a short period of time. It turns out, that short time could be counted in a few hundreds of minutes. And by saying he’ll do it on February 1st, he can toy with us and our well-being for Lord knows how long. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll float another date. Maybe this will become the new “Infrastructure Week” that never comes. Or maybe he’ll wake up in a fever dream after eating some extra crisp KFC and start texting at 3 in the morning that he’s doing it right now.
We may have forgotten it or recovered from the experience, but that was life back in Trump’s first term. That was what he was like when he had guard rails holding him to the road, and if yesterday was a sign of anything, this is going to be worse. Sure, he signed some executive orders that were legal and within his authority, but a lot of what he did yesterday was straight out illegal.
Just look at the TikTok ban reversal, which he legally could not do without actually changing the law. You can’t legally just wipe away a duly passed piece of legislation with an executive order, yet that’s what he’s trying to do. And thanks to the Supreme Court, who ruled he can’t break the law while doing an “official act”, who is actually going to try to uphold the law here? The nodding heads he’s just appointed to run the Justice department or law enforcement agencies? The courts that he previously packed with his appointees or the Supreme Court itself which already gave him the powers of a King? None of them, the usual guard rails in a strong democracy, are going to do a thing to stop him.
If that’s what they’re going to do on something as relatively minor as the banning of a social media app, you know they surely aren’t going to do it when it comes to other acts like stripping legitimate American citizens of their citizenship through an illegal executive order. You know that Trump and his team didn’t draft these orders in such a way that it would take away the citizenship of millions of people, including the now-former Vice President Kamala Harris, just to not use them. And if the courts, law enforcement agencies or Congress of the United States won’t stand in the way, he’ll use them. If anything, Donald Trump isn’t known for having any kind of magnanimous restraint when it comes to going after those he doesn’t like.
But as I said at the start, we’re in it now. It’s all coming at us fast and furious, making it impossible to catch it all, let alone stop it all. If the last time was frustrating and overwhelming at times, this time is already proving to be far more dangerous. This is the environment that we now live in, and we better adapt to it in a hurry if we’re going to make it through to the other side in one piece, or in our case, as an independent country. Trump and his team are ready, prepared and are not waiting for anyone to get their acts together, let alone us. If we aren’t clear on that now after Day 1, then we’re screwed as a nation. And like with of the many allegations made against Donald Trump over the years, it appears it will be a non-consensual act.