Outside In | Why Trump’s Davos farce may come to be seen as a watershed
Whatever his motivations, he’s alarmed allies and made clear the old order based on a benign US is gone, even as his popularity slips at home
In a week marked by the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration as US president and a Davos-based melodrama over his ambitions to own Greenland, it is perhaps timely to review this first year of Trump 2.0 and look into the second.
Whatever the potentially grave ramifications, it often feels as if these forays are designed to divert and distract adversaries and the media from controversies that might jeopardise his radical domestic agenda.
Look also at his extraordinary use of 230 executive orders over the past year to bypass and undermine powers previously thought to rest with the Senate and House of Representatives to make war, levy taxes and regulate commerce. Many claim this amounts to presidential overreach, but who knows how long it will take for the country’s judicial system, itself under assault, to restore powers to where they belong.
US Fed chief threatened with criminal indictment by Trump administration