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.