Trump pushes presidential limits in his first 100 days

With Donald Trump back in the White House you never know what you’re going to get. Will he berate a foreign leader? Rock the global markets? Take vengeance against his foes?

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But there has been one constant behind the chaos of his first 100 days -- Trump is pushing US presidential power to almost imperial limits.

"I think the second term is just more powerful," the 78-year-old Republican said during a recent event. “They do it -- when I say do it, they do it, right?”

Trump has been driven by a sense of grievance left over from an undisciplined first term that ended in the shame of the 2021 US Capitol riots after his election defeat to Joe Biden.

And while Trump freed hundreds of those attackers from jail on his first day back in office, he is taking no prisoners when it comes to consolidating the power of the White House.

"Trump 2.0 is far more authoritarian-minded and authoritarian in its actions than Trump 1.0," political historian Matt Dallek of George Washington University told AFP.

Trump has also stepped up the sense of an endless reality show in which he is the star, as he signs executive orders and takes questions from reporters in the Oval Office almost daily.

That slew of orders has unleashed an unprecedented assault on the cornerstones of American democracy and on the world order.