Donald Trump was sworn into office as the 47th president of the USA on the 20th of January this year, on a freezing Washington DC day. The ceremony was held, because of that forbidding weather, in the Capitol Rotunda, where, on the 6 January, 2021, a riotous crowd of insurrectionists, induced by Trump, had stormed through that building, in a failed attempt to thwart the formal congressional process of certifying the outcome of the 2020 election, that saw Joe Biden become the 46th president.

The period since Trump’s second inauguration has been historically extraordinary. Many have described it as a “shock and awe blitzkrieg”.

He immediately issued a blizzard of executive orders and pardoned essentially all the January 6 insurrectionists. He appointed the billionaire, Elon Musk, to a shadowy office designated DOGE – the Department of Government Efficiency. It is NOT a formal government department nor was Musk subject to any formal congressional confirmation processes. Yet, he has moved rapidly, with a small band of IT technicians and others, into the heart of the USA government bureaucracy, to seize computer systems, fire civil servants and generally exercise sweeping powers.

Arrests and deportations have begun. A detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is growing.

Perhaps, most shockingly, Trump has declared the US will “take” the now ravaged Gaza strip, expel all the Palestinian occupants and convert the territory into a waterfront, real estate opportunity.

In the last few days, Trump announced the imposition of a 25% tariff on all US imports of steel and aluminium. That includes Australian exports of those metals.

The next Australian federal election looms, probably in May.

As we witness the expanding authoritarianism in the USA, what are the implications for our democracy in Australia and our long-term alliance with America?

Melbourne based writer, and political commentator, Tim Dunlop, joins Peter Clarke for a conversation about the first 25 roiling days of Trump 2.0.

It has been about 40 days since Donald Trump was re-elected to become the 47th president of the United States.

He won in the antiquated US electoral college, a relic of the late 18th century, that prevents a direct popular vote of the USA’s apex federal office and one-person-one-vote.

Trump, this time, also won the popular vote but not a majority of it.

Trump has rapidly announced his picks for his cabinet members and other high office holders. Many of those have alarmed and dismayed observers, especially, Fox News presenter, Pete Hegseth, for Defence Secretary, Kash Patel, for FBI director, Tulsi Gabbard, for National Intelligence Director, Kristi Noem, for Homeland Security, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, for Health Secretary.

Billionaires and millionaires will pervade Trump's administration.

The world’s richest man, reputedly, Elon Musk, with his own large reach, social media platform to broadcast pro-Trump propaganda and to spread his personal, often fickle, brand of disinformation, has emerged as a very powerful, although entirely unelected, figure. A "first buddy”?

Trump and his proxies have increased the tempo and intensity of their drumbeat attacks on the media and public interest journalism. The ABC television network, owned by the Disney Corporation, have settled, for 15 million dollars US, a defamation action against them by Trump over an on-air statement that he was legally liable for raping E Jean Carrol. Many legal analysts opined that it was a thin case and, under “normal circumstances”, would have failed.

A chill has settled over the media scape.

Just before the November 5 election day, Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke spoke here with John Lawrence.

John has been a consummate Washington insider. For 38 years he served as a senior staffer in personal, committee and leadership offices in the US House of Representatives. From 2005 to 2013, John was Chief of Staff to now speaker emerita, Nancy Pelosi.

He’s visiting professor at the University of California’s Washington Centre and the author of Arc of Power: Inside Nancy Pelosi's Speakership 2005-2010, and the The Class of 74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship.

John contributes many articles on politics to leading journalism outlets.

John Lawrence returned to the #transitzone to reflect on the re-election of Donald Trump in the 2024 USA election with Peter Clarke.

JOHN LAWRENCE BLOG, “DOMEocracy”: https://johnalawrence.wordpress.com

This is #transitzone USA Election Update 12, recorded on Thursday 31 October 2024, Melbourne time.

Just days to go, United States time, to their 2024 voting day on November the 5th.

It has been an extraordinary and hyper intense period in USA political history from that CNN hosted debate between the incumbent president, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, on June 27th, the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania, the triumphal GOP national convention, immediately after, from July the 15th and, after a roiling period within the Democratic party, Joe Biden stepped aside as their presidential candidate on Sunday afternoon July 21. Within 24 hours, Kamala Harris was the de facto replacement presidential candidate for the Democrats and the roughly hundred day presidential campaign was in full swing: Trump versus Harris.

The two met but once in a formal televised debate which, by general consensus, Harris won, and, during which, a dour and glowering Trump exclaimed, “They’re eating the dogs!” underscoring his campaign’s central theme – IMMIGRATION and the claimed flooding of American cities with illegal aliens.

All through this campaign, Trump has kept up his Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election and, as he did in 2016 and 2020, made it clear that, if he lost this 2024 election in the electoral college, he would again denounce it as “rigged” and a “fraud”.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke have charted the main events and key dynamics of the US election campaign over the last three months with a series of eleven #transitzone podcasts. As the election day looms, this time, a voice from Washington to helps them contextualise and analyse this historic and deeply consequential US presidential election.

John Lawrence has been a consummate Washington insider. For 38 years he served as a senior staffer in personal, committee and leadership offices in the US House of Representatives. From 2005 to 2013, John was Chief of Staff to now speaker emerita, Nancy Pelosi. He’s visiting professor at the University of California’s Washington Centre and the author of Arc of Power: Inside Nancy Pelosi's Speakership 2005-2010, and the The Class of 74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship. John contributes many articles on politics to leading journalism outlets and, as a sidebar activity in his “spare time” writes intriguing pastiches of Sherlock Holmes stories.

This is a feature length conversation.