So, here it is: Donald Trump is the president of the United States once again, and the rest of the world has to deal with that.
Within the USA, the reaction this time is muted, to say the least. There are no major planned protests and the Democrats are in disarray. Big tech has made a huge show of rallying around the president, but corporate America is quietly rallying to him too – banks are cancelling climate funds, and diversity schemes are being slashed everywhere.
If “this is not normal” was the mantra of the first Trump term, the machinery of America’s elite seems determined to send the opposite message this time: America’s new normal is Donald Trump.
He has reshaped his nation in his image, and he’s done so with a relatively solid mandate: Trump obtained almost 15 million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2016, and he won the popular vote this time too.
The Americans who are still appalled by Trump are quite often simply baffled this time round: the liberal mantra that “no one who didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 is voting for him this time” was straightforwardly not true. There are more people who voted for Trump than voted for Kamala Harris. Groups of voters the Dems regarded as their most solid bases broke heavily towards Trump. Every faction of the party has their own reasons as to why, and that internal fight could easily consume the Democrats for some time to come.
All of this has led to a sense of resignation that feels as if it has extended well beyond the borders of the USA. Donald Trump is president, yes, but that’s happened before and we got through it. Despite his best efforts, Joe Biden became his successor, the transition was peaceful, and nothing irreversibly strange took place. Shouldn’t we all just be a bit calmer this time?
The temptation of this chain of thought is undeniable. Trump’s first presidency was exhausting, and most of the various panics led nowhere – his worst impulses were stopped in Congress, the courts, or by members of his own staff or his cabinet. Most of what Trump said could be safely ignored. It was certainly better for your mental wellbeing to do so.
No one can fairly be blamed for wanting to opt out of paying attention, but the reality is that the beginning of Trump’s second term is nothing like the beginning of his first. In 2017, Trump was a volatile candidate with a history of problematic remarks – but he was also surrounded by quite standard Republican staffers and cabinet members. Trump’s love of generals, CEOs, and Republican big names willing to suck up to him (usually because they thought they could exploit him to further their own agenda) meant he had a much more establishment set-up than it first seemed.
Trump himself is a very different man in 2025. He is a 34-time convicted felon, who suffered all the humiliation and indignity of a trial with none of the consequences that come with a verdict. He’s a court-adjudicated sexual abuser, who was ordered to pay hundreds of millions in civil lawsuits. He tried and failed to stage an insurrection to overthrow the last election. He is visibly older and it affects his rhetoric.
But the entourage around him has changed even more. Disgraced former congressman Matt Gaetz might have been withdrawn as nominee for attorney general, but all of Trump’s other nominees are likely to be confirmed.
They include Kash Patel to run the FBI. Patel has repeatedly embraced the QAnon movement, said he would close down the FBI’s headquarters and turn it into a “museum of the Deep State” – but he also published a target list of Donald Trump’s enemies in his last book, and will be in a position to act upon it within days.
Anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F Kennedy Jr will be health and human services secretary. Pete Hegseth, the nominee for the Department of Defense – the man who needs to be on alert 24/7 lest the US needs to respond to a crisis, is a weekend Fox News host. Several of his current and former colleagues have expressed concerns about his drinking – including one recollecting him having three gin and tonics at a weekday breakfast meeting – and broader character.
Across the board, Trump is staffing up with chancers, grifters, and people willing to do whatever Trump says – and who don’t know enough to know how dangerous doing that could be.
Beyond that, the institutions that could hold back Trump and his administration are in ruins. Trump has appointed three of the nine Supreme Court justices personally, and could easily fill two more of the Court’s seats in his next term. Republicans control the House and the Senate – and are already facing direct campaigns of intimidation not to stand in his way.
Trump is both unleashed and unfettered. Some of the decisions made in Trump’s first term had serious consequences: foremost among those, abortion is now severely restricted among many US states, a change which has killed women already and will continue to do so.
But much more could follow. A nationwide abortion ban is now possible, while LGBT rights will come under immediate attack, perhaps even with the loss of same-sex marriage. Aggressive mass deportations, on a scale far greater than term one, are likely to be a reality within months – if not weeks. If Trump launches criminal reprisals on his enemies, the fabric of US democracy could be threatened.
Donald Trump is exhausting and he has worn everyone down. The Democrats have similarly ground down everyone’s will – most obviously with Joe Biden, but also with Kamala Harris, who after months of sounding the alarm over Trump during her campaign, told America everything would be fine in an ill-judged concession speech that will not be kindly remembered by history.
There is not much in US politics to give anyone hope, or make anyone want to watch. But acquiescence and compliance look just the same, and the less outcry and attention there is on Trump’s administration, the easier it is for them to keep pushing forward with their outrages.
We may not want to keep watching, but we owe it to ourselves and to the world not to look away.
