American Battleground: Trump returns to power with ‘shock and awe’

Bitter gusts are sweeping the frozen Potomac River, driving the wind chill into the teens. On the western front of the United States Capitol, rows of folding chairs are frosted and empty. Snow flurries howl above the iconic dome, but beneath it, the “Apotheosis of Washington” glows against the ceiling of the Rotunda. The grand painting by an Italian immigrant depicts the ascension of the nation’s first president as a matter not merely of politics, but of divine inspiration. One hundred and eighty feet below, Donald Trump is summoning his own spiritual fire to heat the room. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” he says to the cheering mass of VIPs driven inside by the weather. Never mind that Trump neglects to place his hand on the two Bibles held up for the oath; he and many of his supporters profess absolute faith that a failed assassination attempt, the electoral stumbles of the Democrats and Trump’s triumphant return to his lost place of power are signs of destiny. “The golden age of America begins right now!” he says. “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first!” His pronouncement is laced with hope for the political right, considering that the Republican Party holds the reins in all three branches of government. He is surrounded by conservative flamethrowers of the MAGA empire alongside old-fashioned, orthodox Republicans united in their zeal to do his bidding. Tech giants are also crowding around, representing some of the most powerful companies on Earth: Amazon, Meta, Google, Tesla and SpaceX. If Forbes’ estimate of Trump’s net worth — over $4 billion — is correct, he is only the ninth-richest person in the room. The top four — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Bernard Arnault — have a combined worth of more than a trillion dollars — enough to give away a million dollars a day for nearly 3,000 years. Their presence underscores how this presidency is fused to the economic elites in a way modern politics has not seen so openly since the Gilded Age, when robber barons ran rampant — an era Trump admires. “These most powerful rich people, you know, kissing the ring, essentially, at his inauguration. That was the most remarkable thing to me,” says Zachary Wolf, a senior writer for CNN. With so much money, power and possibility in the air, in the opening minutes of this address some political watchers wonder whether it will signal a new age — a time in which Trump will feel secure enough to turn to optimism, progress and building the unified electorate he says he wants. Then the tirade begins. For the next half-hour Trump lashes the preceding administration as a rattletrap of incompetence, corruption and dishonesty. The outgoing president, Joe Biden, slumps behind him. Trump rails against those who prosecuted and, in some cases, convicted him of legal malfeasance. He roars about the whole idea of anyone doubting he would be back, bigger and bolder than ever. “Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” Trump crows at a highpoint. “But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.” Then he rolls out his wish list for the coming four years, and jaws start dropping. Trump barrels ahead During the campaign, a 900-plus-page inaugural agenda drawn up by the conservative Heritage Foundation became a lightning rod. Although the screed thrilled Republicans, Democrats called “Project 2025” a battle plan to eviscerate the federal government. During the campaign, it was a central attack line for Democrats to say Project 2025 would be used to weaponize the Justice Department in pursuit of the president’s personal vendettas, tighten immigration laws, restrict women’s health rights, neuter the media, restrict freedom of speech, attack educational institutions, demonize racial minorities, twist elections and much more. Dozens of MAGA insiders were involved in crafting the document, and some of them are part of the new White House team. But Trump has repeatedly denied any real knowledge of it. “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” he said during his September debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Four months later, Trump begins executing the prescribed steps with a flurry of actions designed to erase the legacy of his predecessor, bewilder the opposition, and radically reshape the government before political foes or the courts can stop him. At DC’s Capital One Arena, a huge crowd, which had been kept away from what’s normally an outdoor ceremony by the cold, explodes as he mounts the stage just hours after the swearing-in. “Did you like my speech?” Trump mugs to the sea of smiles and cheers as he launches into the kind of flamboyant political show he loves. He signs a stack of executive orders. In minutes, he unwinds 78 of Biden’s executive orders, withdraws the US from the Paris climate agreement, partially freezes government hiring and many regulations, requires federal workers to return to their offices full time, and declares that some might not need to bother. “Most of those bureaucrats are being fired,” he tells the crowd. “They’re gone.” A woman yells, “We love you, President Trump!” A man shouts, “Can I have a pen?” Back at the White House, he settles behind the Resolute Desk with an expression of deep satisfaction and puts his pen to another set of papers, and a storm erupts among Democrats — and some Republicans, too. For months Trump has said that those who smashed their way into the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, were patriots. At his rallies, he’s played a recording of them singing the national anthem. While trying to overturn Trump’s legitimate 2020 loss to Biden, the mob beat police officers, called for hanging then-Vice President Mike Pence, and sent lawmakers from both parties running in fear for their lives. Nonetheless, Trump has vowed to set them free. Incoming Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News that peaceful protesters deserve clemency, but “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Trump, however, looks at the nearly 1,600 people charged for their actions and sees it differently. “Trump wanted to have pardons on Day 1,” Marc Caputo of Axios tells CNN’s Jake Tapper, “and as they got close to that deadline, they realized they can’t really do a case-by-case review … because it would take too long and he wouldn’t have a giant announcement. So at a certain point he said, ‘F**k it,’ essentially, from what I am told. ‘Let’s just free them all. Let’s just do everybody.’ And that’s what they did.” The move pushes some Republican lawmakers too far. “You just blanket pardon all of them without consequences?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska says. “I think that sends a horrible message to our law enforcement officers.” Others, like Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, echo Trump’s claim that even the violent offenders have suffered enough. “We’re not talking murderers here. … It wasn’t like they didn’t do any time.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson shrugs. “The president’s made a decision. We move forward.” But Enrique Tarrio, a former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, is not satisfied, even though Trump pardoned Tarrio, who had received a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy. “I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution and focusing on success,” he says on Alex Jones’ “Infowars,” before going on to lash out at those who prosecuted him and others. “But I will tell you that I’m not gonna play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat.” Trump steams on. In coming days, he decrees that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America. He orders the government to recognize only two sexes: male and female. In coming months, the new administration will go on a fierce attack against the idea of transgender women competing in female sports and apply distinct pressure on the rights of LBGTQ citizens as part of an overall push against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in both the public and private sectors. Trump says his administration will withhold funding from schools if they don’t promote “patriotic education.” He orders water released from a California reservoir, ostensibly to prove a point he made while visiting the catastrophic wildfires earlier in the year. Experts call the move a waste of a valuable resource farmers will need later. He signs an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, a provision enshrined in the 14th Amendment. When a federal judge slaps a temporary restraining order on Trump’s move and calls it “blatantly unconstitutional,” the White House takes the matter to the Supreme Court. Elliot Williams, a former deputy US attorney and CNN legal analyst, suggests the appeal is a long shot. “Even acknowledging and respecting that a president has a right to shift the tenor of government in his favor, there are limitations,” Williams says. But he adds those limits are “only as good as the courts that have the question before them.” When a military helicopter and commercial airplane collide near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in DC, killing 67 people, Trump blames programs that promote diversity in hiring. He declares himself chairman of the board at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, promises more Christian entertainment, and says maybe he should emcee some events. He tells the Treasury to stop making pennies. He commands the government to use plastic straws, not paper ones. “These things don’t work,” he says. “On occasion they break, they explode.” “It was just thing after thing after thing,” CNN’s Zachary Wolf says, describing the onslaught as unlike anything else seen in a modern presidency. “It was clear that they were ready to go, in a way that we didn’t understand that they were going to be ready.” MAGA world is beside itself with happiness. This is the decisive action they wanted. All over social media, Trump supporters post a favorite phrase each time he acts: Promises made, promises kept. “They knew what they were doing this time,” Charlie Savage of The New York Times says on PBS’ “Washington Week with The Atlantic” show. “They were well-prepared, this was scripted … and he was really pushing at the limits of legitimate executive authority with some of them.” ‘Muzzle velocity’ On a warm March evening in 2003, flames billowed upward, spraying sparks and painting the skyline a vivid orange. One explosion after another shakes the land as fighter jets and missiles slash the sky. “Hell on Earth,” ITV’s John Irvine called it, as Baghdad erupted behind him. “This isn’t just an attack on bricks and mortar; it is an assault on the human senses.” Forces allied with the United States against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were unleashing an all-out attempt to destroy not merely the operational capacity of his army, but also the will of his troops. Military leaders called the technique “shock and awe,” and many of Team Trump’s foot soldiers adopted the phrase to describe their efforts to disorient and discourage any opposition. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon championed the concept in the president’s first term. The 2025 plan Bannon describe as “days of thunder.” “Remember, there’s been four years of preparation here,” he tells Politico. “You’re going to see many more people hit the beach … I believe President Trump is going to hit it and hit it hard with what I call … muzzle velocity.” It seems to be working. Each startling headline is overtaken by another faster than readers can digest. Media fact-checkers fight to keep up with the torrent of claims flowing out of the White House. Democratic leaders appear paralyzed, to the dismay of their supporters, who are desperate to see any resistance to the Trump juggernaut. The Democratic Party’s favorability rating is plunging. When CNN measures it in early -March 2025, it will stand at just 29% — 20 points lower than it was in January 2021, and at a record low since CNN started polling in 1992. “They’re defeated, and they’re in disarray. Some of them are depressed,” says Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist and former adviser to President Bill Clinton, as he contemplates possible responses from his party. “My counsel has been: Make it about the cost of living … speak about one thing: groceries, gas and rent.” That strategy may hold promise for Democrats and others opposed to Trump. After all, despite all the breakneck action, there is little evidence Trump is taking significant steps to fulfill the key promise of his campaign: to lower prices and reduce inflation starting on Day 1. Another former Clinton strategist, James Carville, advises Democrats to wait for Trump’s own overreaching policies and hubris to create self-inflicted wounds on his standing with voters. “We have to learn to let him punch himself out,” Carville says, harking back to Muhammad Ali’s famous rope-a-dope strategy. “Then, after a while, we can come in and launch our own moves.” But for the moment, such tactics are faint glimmers against the white-hot Trump firestorm. “For the next four years, I will not rest. I will not yield, and together, we will not fail,” the president declares to a rally of supporters in Las Vegas. Indeed, by the time Presidents Day comes around four weeks into his return to power, Trump is musing about running for a third term. The Constitution says he can’t. Members of his own party say it would be against the law. And experts say some of what Trump is already doing will be proved illegal as the courts weigh in. But Trump goes to social media and meets the critics that would ridicule and restrain him with a quote attributed to Napoleon — a statement that spurs the highest hopes of his followers and the deepest fears of his foes. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” CNN’s Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.