Donald Trump, president again/Inauguration pool

By Lisa Van Dusen

January 20, 2025

America and the world witnessed the bizarre spectacle Monday of a president whose first-term finale was a violent, failed coup against the United States Congress sworn in for a second one.

The inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the former reality show host, property developer and casino owner whose status as a potentially fatal chaos actor in the 248-year life of American democracy has defined his performance both domestically and on the global stage since 2015, presented a surreal fusion of democratic ritual, autocratic menace and mind-over-matter normalization by both participants and professional observers.

An event inconceivable at any previous moment in American history, Trump’s return to the White House despite two impeachments, a violent insurrection against his successor, a head-spinning tally of mendacity and a 2024 election campaign that defied all established norms of political viability, electability, discourse, and credulity was a testament to the distinctly 21st-century global assault on democracy of which he is both a symptom and a symbol.

Monday’s inauguration ceremony, which was moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda due to extreme cold, spared the world the ironic visual juxtaposition of a president being sworn in against the same, iconic backdrop set aflame on January 6, 2021, by the deadly mob he had incited to swarm to U.S. Capitol. It also spared the world a repeat of the 2017 “crowd size” diversion in which Trump officials hilariously asserted that there had been more people on the National Mall for Trump’s inauguration than the record-breaking throng that showed up for Barack Obama’s four years earlier.

The good news for Canada on Monday was an apparent reprieve from the 25% tariffs Trump has been threatening to impose on Canadian imports, though he later said in the Oval Office that the tariffs could be imposed February 1st. Given the source, there may be absolutely no way to confirm whether that information is true or false until February 1st, with the proviso that the threat could be perpetuated indefinitely as a psychological warfare tactic against Canada for being the best neighbour a country could possibly ask for.

In his inaugural address, Trump, in classic populist-autocrat fashion, portrayed himself as the champion of the downtrodden, the reclaimer of America’s “glorious destiny” and, above all, as a victim, rather than an indisputable, gift-that-keeps-on-giving asset, of anti-American interests. In the trademark reality-show style with which Trump has segued from his first career as a zealously self-promoting New York City business celebrity to a norm-obliterating, anti-democracy political player, his address unfurled a series of brazen misrepresentations, absurd distortions and misdirectional rationales for the weakening of what remains of America’s democratic status quo via a series of policy directives; some substantive, some largely symbolic.

Those plans include, via a flurry of executive orders signed later in the Oval Office, declaring a national emergency at the southern US border and suspending refugee and asylum claims, as well as ending the birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That move is expected to draw an immediate legal challenge that will likely end up before a Supreme Court packed in Trump’s first term for just such occasions. He also cancelled gender and sex-based initiatives implemented by the Biden administration, reversing protections for LGBTQ+ students. Also, the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and the re-re-renaming of Alaska’s Mount Denali, reverting to Mount McKinley. Barack Obama had reinstated the original Koyukon name of the highest mountain peak in North America in 2015.

Interestingly, Trump’s tone on Monday was more restrained than the incendiary delivery that characterized his first, “American carnage” inaugural address. Whether that portends a kinder, gentler form of democracy degradation during his second term, time will tell.

Policy Editor and Publisher Lisa Van Dusen has served as Washington bureau chief for Sun Media, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News, senior writer for Maclean’s and an editor at AP National in New York and UPI in Washington.