He’s making a list. He’s checking it twice. And starting today, he’s going to round up and imprison people who’ve lived in America for 25 years or more, whether they’re naughty or nice.
As Donald Trump is sworn into power as the 47th – and possibly last – president of the United States, jackbooted goons are already tooling up for raids in major cities to scoop up ‘undocumented migrants’, many of whom are in fact his taxpayers.
It is the first, big, obvious bang for a president who likes making a noise and feels like nanny shut him up last time he tried. But now the orange man-baby has his big boy bike, the stabilisers are off, and he’s got all the votes he needs.
A lot has changed since 2020. Last time he was merely a suspected grabber of cats. This time, he’s a court-approved rapist.
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In 2016, Trump led a party that half-hated him. There’s still a handful of haters, but they’re on the fringes of a Republican movement that is balls-deep in Trumpmania.
At his first inauguration, he was pictured waving at empty barricades as people boycotted Washington, and his angry little press secretary Sean Spicer memorably claimed it drew “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”. This time, it’s so cold that thousands who wanted to witness it will be squeezed into an arena to watch it on TV, rather than stood on the National Mall, where a proper comparison could be made.
Last time he was replacing a two-term president who was widely admired, at home and abroad. This time, he’s kicking out a one-term senile old man who left Aghanistan to the Taliban, couldn’t fix Gaza on his own, and whose legacy legislation will take decades to have effect. It’s hard not to look popular next to that.
Last time, the Village People sent him cease-and-desist letters over playing their music. This time, the group created as a pastiche of alpha male stereotypes performed with Trump on stage. No word yet on whether their fees for such appearances have increased as their gayness declines.
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Trump has, in theory, four years, including mid-terms which may see him lose his slim Congressional majorities. So he’s hitting the ground a la Liz Truss, with immigration raids. Not just on convicted or even alleged criminals, not just on recent arrivals, but on anyone without paperwork – which in some cases means people who’ve lived in the US for decades, raised a family, and contribute around $10.8billion in taxes annually. They also keep the service and construction industries afloat.
Raids, holding cells, and deportations of the millions Trump has promised will create a massive economic shock. The US does not have the jails or staff to round-up, hold or process anything approaching the number of people Trump has pledged to deport. This means one of three options: it’s scaled right down, it’s done only for show, or it’s concentration camp time.
The other things he’s promised are likewise eye-catching, even vote-winning, but hard to achieve through legal means. The US president cannot declare war, and can order military action only to repel attacks. He has to ask Congress for approval, but that’s the only wriggle room Greenland has for hoping it won’t be annexed by the marines before Easter.
He’s also going to buy half of TikTok for the US government, at a knockdown price, having saved it from a court-ordered shutdown and done nothing at all to make it any less of a security threat. But hey, he’ll share the ad revenue with China even if he threatens tariffs against everything else it has.
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But much of the positivity from Trump’s supporters and commentators about what he can do in office this time around comes from comparing it to the constraints he had in 2016, which included members of his own staff trying to stop him being TOO awful, and a complete lack of awareness on his own part how the levers of power actually worked.
This time, his team is cleansed of doubters, and prepped for battle. But the Republicans only have a two-seat majority in both houses, and they’re already splintering. Just a few days ago, Trumpkins in Congress rejected a bid by Republican moms for proxy voting for a six-week maternity period, so they could represent their states without travelling to Washington. Those behind the bill, despite being fully Team Trump, have reached out across the aisle to Democrats to get the bill passed. Nothing like a precedent to upset a president.
Within the MAGA movement, the faithful are crying heretic and ejecting each other from house committees as they scrabble for a power base. In any event, with only two seats in it in any vote, it takes only a handful of unhappy Republicans – and let’s face it, they’re all pissed about something – to veto the president, suspend the budget, or cause a government shutdown, as happened to him before.
That will happen again. And when it does, Trump will go all “the American people want me to do it” and accused members of his own party of being traitors. His talk, we know, can cause riots – in the next five years it’s highly likely it will cause assassination attempts and violence.
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The question with Trump is always – is it going to be as bad as it sounds? Much of America voted for him thinking the system of checks and balances would make him relatively safe, like it did before. They have forgotten that the economy did badly on his watch compared to other nations, and that the only stolen election in recent memory was the one where he had to be crowbarred out of the White House while men dressed as bison rampaged through the Capitol.
Some of those rioters will be pardoned by the end of today, and they won’t all have been innocent protesters swept up by the crowds. The biggest thing he did last time was enrich his own family and businesses, to the tune of billions. This time, a convicted felon in the White House means only one thing: gangsterism.
Trump is about to head the biggest criminal enterprise in history – an entire nation which doesn’t care about the law, or being on the right side of it.
So no, there won’t be concentration camps filled with Hispanic and Latino residents who should by any measure have earned citizenship by now. There’ll just be places with fences, and unprocessed aliens behind them, and the beatings, rapes and disease will leak out a bit at a time. There will be an economic boom if you’re invested in meme coins, Trump stock and statistical lies, but firing civil servants, conducting a witch hunt among officials, and stripping two major industries bare while waving goodbye to billions in tax revenue is going to cause inflation, protests, and party rebellions.
The military will lose its diversity targets, which means any use of force will be, politically and ethnically, more Trumpian. He’s asking renowned anti-Semite Mel Gibson to tell him what’s wrong with Hollywood (three guesses), and a difference of opinion on climate change is going to break up the bromance with Elon Musk.
It doesn’t matter whether Trump is a fascist or just Trumpian. He is, fundamentally, a toddler, short-sightedly shouting about what he wants without wondering whether it’s a good idea.
And last time, what he wanted was a third, highly-unconstitutional term. The chances of him leaving office gracefully because the rules say he should are less than zero. The fact is that, at 78, the only real limiting factor on this man’s power is the hand of God. And that’s something that should frighten the pants off anyone.