: A rebrand, not a revolution

 

Arwa Mahdawi

“Sunlight is pouring over the entire world,” President Donald Trump proclaimed loftily on a freezing cold Monday as he addressed the nation. This speech, he’d promised before the inauguration, would be all about unity. Gone would be the vengeful president whose 2017 inauguration address was famously about “American carnage”; Trump the Destroyer would be replaced by Trump the Unifier. And for the first 10 minutes of his almost 30-minute speech, he delivered on this promise.

He talked bluntly about problems in the US that people of every political persuasion could rally behind – from the government’s “crisis of trust” to a “public health system that doesn’t deliver”. He promised to “bring back prosperity for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed”.

But Trump can’t help himself, can he? Even when talking about sunlight he can’t stop the dark clouds of vengeance from creeping in. He said he wanted to be known as a peacemaker then, in the next breath, threatened to annex the Panama Canal, which he said “has foolishly been given to the country of Panama”. He talked about a “revolution of common sense” then made clear that what he means by common sense is mass deportations, waging war on trans people and ending the Green New Deal.

While today’s speech certainly struck a more measured tone than his 2017 address, it was still Trump through and through: not a revolution so much as a rebrand. And not much of a rebrand at that. There was the usual self-aggrandizing martyrdom, as well as jingoistic stunts masquerading as policy. See, for example, his promise to establish an External Revenue Service and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

It wasn’t what Trump said at the inauguration that sent the strongest message, however – it was all the billionaires and CEOs he was surrounded by. “Big Tech billionaires have a front row seat at Trump’s inauguration,” noted Elizabeth Warren on Twitter/X. “They have even better seats than Trump’s own cabinet picks. That says it all.” Perhaps sunlight really is pouring over the entire world: it has, after all, never been so clear that American carnage has been replaced by American oligarchy.

GUARDIAN