Donald Trump’s world: ‘deliberate chaos, maximum control’

A bold and erratic new world order beckons with the inauguration today of Donald Trump as the 45th US president.

Donald and Melania Trump at the Lincoln Memorial.

A bold and erratic new world order beckons for Australia and the international community with the inauguration today of Donald Trump as the 45th US president.

The maverick 70-year-old billionaire comes to office promising a generational change in the way America does business with itself and with the world.

He does so amid chaos, with most of his cabinet still unconfirmed and with the President at loggerheads with his intelligence agencies and Euro­pean allies over NATO and the EU.

For Australia, his inauguration early today raises a host of un­answered questions about the futur­e of key trade deals, the ANZUS ­alliance and how the Trump administration will ­challenge China on trade and its aggressi­ve colonisation of disputed islands in the South China Sea.

The unpredictable new President also inherits a deeply polarised country, with his approval ratings falling to only 40 per cent, the lowest of any incoming president of the modern era. Holding his wife Melania’s hand, Mr Trump made a dramatic entrance to the inauguration concer­t at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington yesterday to the Rolling Stones’s Heart of Stone and pledged he would change America, including building up its military, in a way that had not been seen in the modern era.

“I promise I will work so hard, we’re going to get it turned around,” he said, promising more jobs, tough borders and a stronger military. “We are going to do things that haven’t been done for our country for many, many ­decades — it’s going to change.”

Mr Trump described the army of mostly blue-collar white voters who elected him as “a movement ­unlike anything in the world — you are not forgotten any more”.

Yet he comes to power after one of the most unconventional transitions, where he picked fights with civil rights heroe­s, Hollywood, and the CIA over Russia, and appointed a raft of aged billionaires and business titan­s to run America’s bureaucracy.

“It’s chaos around him but ­deliberate chaos,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican political strategist who worked in the ­George W. Bush White House.

“It’s the kind of chaos that preserves maximum control for him.”

The inauguration crowns the remarkable rise of the billionaire businessman, the first to be elected without being either a politician or a general. It follows his unexpect­ed victory over Hillary Clinton in November and heralds a shake-up in the way politics is conducted in Washington, with his pledge to run the government using the same principles as he used to creat­e his global business empire.

After being sworn in, Mr Trump and his wife were due to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House amid a sea of American flags. He will then attend­ three gala balls to give formal­ thanks to his supporters, thousands of whom have travelled to Washington from the rural towns and rust belt cities which propelled him to the White House.

But they have come to Washington knowing few details about their new President’s agenda, with Mr Trump holding only one press conference and communicating mostly by tweets since his victory.

“The Trump we’ve seen on the campaign trail is the Trump that is going to be president,” said Ed Brookover, a former adviser to Mr Trump. “Every White House seeks its own management style and is often learning on the go.”

At the concert yesterday, with the statue of Abraham Lincoln­ as a backdrop, Mr Trump boogied behind bulletproof glass to a line-up that included Toby Keith, Lee Greenwood and The Frontmen Of Country. After he had struggled to find A-list actors to support him, Jon Voight of ­Midnight Cowboy fame gave a fiery sermon to the crowd, saying “this is some day, a barrage of propaganda that left us all breathless with anticipation, not knowing if God could reverse all the negative lies against Mr Trump, whose only desire was to make America great again”.

Earlier, Mr Trump hosted a lunch at the Trump International Hotel, where he described his proposed new cabinet of fellow billionaires and retired generals as brilliant, saying: “One thing we’ve learned, we have by far the highest IQ of any cabinet ever assembled.”

He had laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at the Arlington cemetery for the first time to kick off the formal­ ceremonies.

An estimated 800,000 people were expected to attend the inauguration, down from about 1.8 million at Mr Obama’s 2009 ceremony.

Early today, Barack and Mich­elle Obama were to greet the Trumps for tea at the White House before both families travelled to the Capitol for the swearing-in.

Last night, protesters and supporters of Mr Trump clashed outside a pro-Trump event in Washington. Police used chemical spray after hundreds of protesters gathered outside the National Press Club in downtown Washington, where the “DeploraBall” was being held. The name is a play on a campaign remark by Hillary Clinton, who once referred to many Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables”. Protesters booed any time presumed ball-goers in suits, tuxedos or dresses came in or out of the event.