Trump 2.0 means what he says. His delirious base expects nothing else

At 12.02pm in Washington DC, Donald Trump took the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and resumed his presidency. It was an oath taken that half the country expects to be not only tested, but broken.

Trump’s inauguration ceremony was without the massive pomp had it been witnessed in person by hundreds of thousands of people engulfing on the Mall from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. Instead, it was delivered in the Capitol’s very rotunda that was desecrated by his armies to stop the peaceful transfer of power four years ago. Trump did not mention January 6 in this speech – but none doubted he would pardon as many of the participants in the insurrection as he could reach with his pen.

It was a dark and sombre speech, delivered with the scowl that Trump has mastered from his mug shot in Georgia when he was arraigned for trying to overturn that state’s presidential election in 2020, to the official portrait that every Australian will see in the immigration halls when they fly into a US airport.

As was the case eight years ago, the centrepiece of this speech was immigration: the threat posed to the nation by an uncontrolled surge of vicious criminals who threaten the safety and security of the country. That issue – more than the state of the economy and the squeeze on households from inflation– is bedrock Trump and will, one suspects, dominate his second term. Until the end of his days, Trump will move to purge the land of the vermin aliens who are poisoning the blood of the American people.

Where there was light in the darkness of the address, it was in the redemption he sees from all that he stands for: “The golden age of America begins right now … I will very simply put America First.” In the wake of the attempts on his life, Trump’s destiny is now imbued with the divine. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

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Trump said he wanted to be a “peacemaker and unifier,” but he has wars to fight in the Americas. Trump is sending military troops to close the border with Mexico and to deport illegal aliens. Trump will designate the criminal cartels in Mexico and other countries as “terrorist organisations.” This means Trump intends to use military force to take these cartels out – just as he conducted strikes against ISIS in the Middle East.

On the Panama Canal, which by treaty, approved by Congress, the United States ceded to Panama in 1977, Trump insists that American shipping is being wildly overcharged and that China “controls” the canal. Neither is true. But Trump says, “We’re taking it back” – which means he is seriously considering using military force to seize it. Let the Southern Wars begin.

Surprisingly, Trump only mentioned in passing the tariffs he wants to impose in passing. “We will tariff and tax foreign counties.” That was all. We do not know if Trump will impose tariffs on Australia’s exports to the US even though America enjoys a huge trade surplus with Australia and that there is a free trade agreement – with a bias against tariffs – between the two countries. Stay tuned.