Trump lines his pockets and leaves his supporters out in the cold

Some of the best relationship advice I ever received was to begin the way you intend to carry through. That probably meant something like being kind in disagreements and doing the dishes without being asked but this week, especially, the lesson seems appropriate for politics, too.

Donald Trump was again sworn in to the most powerful office in the world on Tuesday (AEDT). Unlike in 2017, though, he began this term by leaving his supporters out in the cold while he and his billionaire friends enjoyed the warmth of the Capitol, a building some of his supporters are all too familiar with.

Donald Trump holds a sabre after using it to cut a cake, as Vice President J.D. Vance looks on, at the Commander-in-Chief Inaugural Ball.Credit: AP

The week leading up to his swearing-in included a voluntary shutdown of TikTok across the United States (likely orchestrated to make Trump the hero to the more than 100 million dopamine-addicted American users when it was switched back on), and the launch of his own cryptocurrency meme coin, $Trump, which rose to a peak value of $US70 billion ($112 billion) – the first lady also launched her own meme coin, $Melania. Arguably Trump’s most on-the-nose decision, though, was to shut down his outdoor inauguration event to instead host it in the Capitol building with the billionaire CEOs and YouTube stars who came to pledge their loyalty.

Trump made a flurry of executive orders hours after taking office that will almost certainly result in further polluted air and water, more dangerous natural disasters, and a hollowed-out government loyal to Trump himself, not the American people. None of these executive orders seems at all likely to make the lives of his supporters (let alone the rest of the country) any better off. His wave of orders on immigration are a mix of widely popular efforts that Trump stymied when he blocked a Republican-led immigration bill from passing in 2024, and challenges to the Constitution, such as Trump’s new ban on birthright citizenship (which is enshrined in the 14th amendment).

The primary reason for Trump’s victory was grievance. But those same people who put their faith in him to bring down the cost of living are being shown how he intends to govern – with his own wealth and comfort in mind rather than service to the American people.

As president, Trump now faces the challenge of actually delivering for the American people. It’s a true adage that governing is a lot harder than campaigning. Trump’s bluster should count for less than it did first time around, but his signature now counts for a lot more. He has consolidated the loyalty of every major social media platform in the US, and he understands media and attention better than just about anyone. His plans to gut the US government and install loyalists in place of career public servants should frighten anyone interested in countering this wave of authoritarian politics.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg (left) watches the inauguration next to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his partner, Lauren Sanchez; Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai; and Tesla boss Elon Musk.Credit: Bloomberg

As a candidate or even as president-elect, his words could move markets, but they couldn’t direct the functions of government. Now, his pen has removed the US from the World Health Organisation and the Paris climate accord. The TikTok ban becomes a real problem for him and his advisers now because he has no ability to overturn a law passed by Congress and affirmed by the Supreme Court – despite both of those branches being largely loyal to him. His choice is either to enforce it or to ignite a constitutional crisis.

And this is the challenge of governing. The people who put their faith in him now expect him to do something that benefits them – not just those in his inner circle – to address their pain and anger. But rather than wielding the power of government towards that end, he seems bent on using the frustrations of the people who put him in power to fill his own pockets.

Fear is an elegant weapon, and Trump plays on the insecurities of his base like a piano. He knows that we’re in a moment of high emotion rather than logic. He knows that he won because people voted with their hearts rather than their heads. This is what the Democrats, my own party, have to grapple with right now. They are trying to run the number-crunching playbook of 2012 in an entirely different political landscape. Democrats have to stop trying to be the saviours of broken institutions at a time when people feel things a lot more than they think them through.

That said, most of the American public will learn about just how much the Biden administration accomplished when Trump rescinds its actions. Just one example is Trump’s day-one revocation of a Biden executive order that limited the costs of prescription drugs for senior citizens.

This is perhaps what scares me most about Trump taking control. Normally, when a leader steps in, governing is difficult because people are looking for results on the promises they were given during the campaign. Four years is a long time, and political support can change overnight. Trump often seems curiously exempt from those rules of political gravity, both because of his own undeniable political talent as a showman and because of his ability to control the ways most Americans hear those stories. When he last held the presidency, he left office with a 34 per cent approval rating because of his failures to govern and the chaos he caused. For all of our showmanship, the American dream dies not with thunderous applause but with callous indifference.

And we sent him back in anyway.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris administration for three years.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.