Trump 2.0 - The Showman Returns

A week or so into Donald Trump’s second attempt at being the best President the United States has ever had, we can safely say it’s not going to be boring. If you happen to be a political journalist and are lucky enough to be covering America, the next four years will be easy work. The headlines will write themselves.

There is something about Trump – the fake tan, the unfortunate haircut, the ill-fitting suits, and the general buffoonery – that suggests he should be the last man in charge of the world. Yet, here we are! The most powerful man on the planet is someone who once boasted he could “do anything” with women and a man who has been convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, including hush money to a former porn star. Trump is the only former US President to be convicted of a felony. In all honesty, he can consider himself unlucky – Clinton and Nixon got off scot-free.

Just so no one was in any doubt that Trump might have, in the preceding four years, changed his colours, one of his first orders was to pardon the January 6th Capitol rioters – people convicted of attacking the very office and system he now presides over.

Everything about Trump is showmanship – that he and his great nation are bigger, better, and bolder than the rest of the world. He is the man that can do, whilst sleepy Joe Biden just wandered off stages and fell up flights of stairs. In the last week, he declared that those born in the United States will no longer receive automatic citizenship, something that directly contradicts the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

He has rolled back any limits on arms sales to the Zionists, whilst at the same time claiming he is the one responsible for the ceasefire in Gaza. He also declared that Gaza needs to be cleared, and the people should be taken in by neighbouring countries. This came in the same week that the US administration announced that Trump “expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.” The irony of lecturing the world on global obligations while removing the rights of those with legal claims to not only Gaza but all of Palestine is stark. When Colombia refused to accept “illegals” back on military aircraft and requested they be sent on civilian planes to maintain their dignity, Trump reacted by imposing trade tariffs on Colombian exports to the United States. Unsurprisingly, the Colombians eventually backed down.

Trump’s blatant arrogance is premised on believing America is here to stay as the number one geopolitical and ideological power in the world. Surrounded by the Tech Bros of Silicon Valley and their billions, courted by the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, one cannot blame Trump for thinking that the world is his oyster. Announcing Project Stargate: a $500 billion infrastructure initiative to be spearheaded by a partnership between OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT; the Japanese investment bank SoftBank; and MGX, the tech investment arm of the United Arab Emirates government. Trump hailed it as “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history”. A project that cost more than the Apollo mission, which took the United States to the moon.

The project announcement included the statement, “We believe that this new step is critical on the path and will enable creative people to figure out how to use AI to elevate humanity.” As a collective, humanity should not hold its breath.

The unfortunate thing for the Trump administration was that the announcement came as a little-known Chinese company, DeepSeek, announced it had created its own AI to rival that of OpenAI. The only difference is that it cost less, worked better, and is open source. This revelation undercut the grandeur of Project Stargate and prompted Trump to declare that the emergence of DeepSeek was a wake-up call for American tech firms.

As Trump reaches to save the world, America’s internal problems are huge. The sweeping crime waves, the opioid and fentanyl drug crisis, the spiralling cost of living, and the fact that 28 million people still have no health insurance are stark reminders that behind the fanfare and showmanship, Trump and capitalism are struggling to achieve the very basics of a political system: keeping its people safe, healthy, and fed.