Trump’s return to the White House is a carefully choreographed display of brute force

Donald Trump swept back into the presidency in a display of brute force power on Monday, seizing control of the optics of the inaugural ceremony and then the federal government before he is expected to sign more than 200 executive actions as his aides took over the West Wing.

The return of Trump to office was choreographed on his terms – and notably, for television – after he announced in a Truth Social post without telling anyone first that he was moving the outdoor ceremony inside the rotunda of the US Capitol because of the cold.

The congressional planning committee scrambled to accommodate Trump’s wishes and he was sworn in as the 47th commander in chief on a special stage that was surrounded by studio lights and guests that included the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

The official part of the ceremony held at the seat of US democracy was streamed live at the venue for the unofficial part of the ceremony – the nearby Capitol One Arena, a sports venue transformed by another specially-constructed stage adorned with the presidential seal.

Hours after he was sworn in,Trump was expected at the Arena to sit at an elaborate desk, with its own presidential seal, strategically set up directly across from a riser of around a hundred television cameras, to sign more than 200 executive orders that will dramatically reshape the nation.

As Trump basked in the theatrics of the transfer of power, his senior staff with military efficiency started their takeover of the executive branch, fanning across the White House complex to enter their offices in the West Wing and execute the contents of the orders.

The orders are as numerous as they are far reaching, from declaring a national emergency at the US southern border as a justification to limit immigration, to invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to ramp up deportations, to designating cartels as terrorist organizations.

They also start the process of radically reshaping the executive branch itself by removing protections for career employees, as part of a wider effort to fire officials deemed to be part of the so-called “deep state” or people seen as insufficiently loyal to him personally.

They also literally remade the interior of the White House, ripping out the decor of Joe Biden’s presidency in the Oval Office and replacing it with the starburst-pattern carpet and gold curtains that Trump had during his first term.

The execution of the second Trump administration is poised to be dramatically different compared with the first. For one, his team has learned how to manipulate the levers of government and weaponize Trump’s power over the Republican party to achieve their political goals.

Trump feels unencumbered to bully his critics and do what he wants, according to close advisers. He feels carefree that he has no investigations hanging over him like he did in 2017 and he almost certainly will never be the target of a federal criminal case again.

Part of the ruthless efficiency with which Trump is expected to move on his first day back as president is borne from the knowledge that, in his first term, aides and career officials would invariably delay implementing directives in the hope that Trump would forget and move on.

Whether the West Wing will be less chaotic remains to be seen. In his first term, Trump cycled through four chiefs of staff, as he either soured on their attempts to manage his most extreme impulses or they fell victim to internal backstabbing by aides jockeying for influence.

The incoming White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is not anticipated to have that problem, after she demonstrated remarkable staying power as his campaign manager by generally agreeing with Mr Trump and quietly ejecting aides who threatened to upend her management.

There will also be almost no officials who have a greater allegiance to the institution of the presidency than to the president himself; gone are the days of White House counsels such as Don McGahn, who cooperated with the Russia investigation for fear that Trump had obstructed justice.

Still, the campaign was a smaller team compared to a full West Wing staff and, even then, tensions flared in the final months of the election cycle and through some of the transition as aides jockeyed for influence – one thing that is always constant in Trumpworld.

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