In early December 2024, after the United States election, I decided to write down what I thought would happen, and when, over the first year of Donald Trump’s administration. At the time, I realised this exercise was a way to brace myself for what might happen in his second term by imagining the worst – essentially, how Trump might dismantle our democracy and institutions.
Among other things, I wrote that, immediately after inauguration, the US would be in chaos: there would be the signing of multiple executive orders, Congress mostly supporting them (or at least not challenging them effectively), and many sensational news stories. I anticipated that Trump and his appointees would also immediately fire untold numbers of government workers.
These and many other predictions have been pretty accurate, but there have also been some really extraordinary things that I didn’t foresee in December – the extent of Elon Musk’s illegal involvement in the US government, for example, and Trump’s cryptocurrency launch.
Surprising speed of change
However, the thing that has surprised me most, looking back, has been the speed at which these changes have been realised. At time of writing, we are not quite three months into Trump’s presidency (almost to the end of the traditional benchmark of the ‘first 100 days’ of a new US president’s administration), and already my predictions for summer and fall of 2025 have taken place.
In the US we’re witnessing the dismantling of social security and Medicare, massive lay-offs of food and drug safety personnel and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA, which provides federal support and relief during disasters in the United States).
I predicted that it would be fall 2025 before we ran into extreme weather and the federal government not willing or able to help, but we’re there already. In fact, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced her intention to ‘eliminate’ FEMA in March.
Trump isn’t joking
Many across the globe are still in shock about the rapid shifts in policy and disengagement of the US and the heavy impact of these changes internationally. Yet almost everything that is happening has been no secret at all; Trump, his allies, and people supporting the Project 2025 agenda have been very clear all along about their intention to pursue the goals that the president and his administration are now actively and vigorously pursuing.
Trump would occasionally say he was “joking” when he seemed to go too far (for example, in talking about annexing Canada or taking over Greenland), but as we’ve seen this ‘joking’ was, and is not, a joke at all; this is the way the administration tests its ideas in the world – then acts upon them. Those who voted for Trump even if they didn’t agree with everything he said, chose not to believe their own eyes and ears. And many who didn’t vote for Trump didn’t believe their own eyes and ears, either.
And so, on this 249th anniversary of the first US president taking office, Bylines is exploring reactions to the current presidency. It’s interesting to look a little more deeply into George Washington’s first two terms and to note at least some similarities.
Comparing the first president with the 47th
While Trump in his second term is actively reshaping the government, so too was Washington in his first term creating what the US government would look like: defining the role of the executive branch, establishing a cabinet of advisors, and literally creating the Supreme Court.
Notably, the Naturalization Act of 1790 was established by Washington, which laid out guidelines for naturalization of “any Alien being a free white person”. (One can assume that Trump’s recent attacks on birthright citizenship don’t necessarily apply to this first act, but to the 14th Amendment, stating that ALL persons born or naturalised in the USA are citizens, not just ‘free white’ men. Trump also challenged the 14th Amendment so that he could run for office despite being an insurrectionist.)
Washington’s second term was rockier, and more reminiscent of the current political climate. During this term, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was passed, establishing a legal mechanism for slaveholders to recover ‘their property’ that furthered the injustice and already deep-rooted racism inherent in the country. Washington also had to deal with emerging political fractures and rebellions against taxes by citizens.
Channelling Goebbels?
Two elements that are notably different from Washington’s presidency are the current administration’s penchant for running the country (and the world) like an all-powerful mob boss, dispensing punishment and favours at the president’s own whim (as we’ve seen so far with the on-off imposition of US tariffs, among other things), and a tendency toward fascist behaviours.
Again, the speed at which all this has happened feels as if it’s a political and psychological version of the Nazi Blitzkrieg. This feeling is supported quite explicitly by instances such as Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, saying he wants bureaucrats to experience “trauma”, and Texas congressman Keith Self unabashedly and positively quoting Joseph Goebbels.
Trumpism, fascism, Nazism – what’s next?
There are many other elements of fascism and Nazism that echo through the Trump administration’s approach: opposition to ‘decadence’ and political and cultural liberalism; an imperialistic and colonial approach to the world; a reverence for militarism; a focus on hyper-masculinity; a harking back to an illusory ‘Golden Age’. Trumpers bristle at or dismiss being called fascists or Nazis, yet the parallels are as remarkable as they are undeniable.
As the world knows, each day (or at least each day that Trump isn’t golfing) brings something new and horrible, some of it predictable, some not. How much longer business, markets, former allies and other countries, or ordinary American people will stand for it, I don’t know. Whether this leads to war, I don’t know.
Some at home and in the wider world are convinced that the US as we know it doesn’t exist any longer. Considering the speed and severity of the actions of the US Federal government we’ve seen so far, I would have to agree.
This government is very different – different in kind, not just degree – from what has been the norm throughout my life. Even if in the future we can achieve a return to a more familiar kind of White House, many of the changes that have happened just in the last 90 days will take decades, if not generations, to reverse.
