Trump has arrived with abang-but can he follow through?

Little more than a week ago, Stewart Rhodes was serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy over his role in a deadly attack on the US Capitol.

- David Smith

Last Wednesday, two days after Donald Trump's inauguration as president, Rhodes was inside the Capitol building, wearing a Trump 2020 hat and relaxing at a Dunkin' Donuts.

With mere strokes of a pen, Trump has launched a rightwing political revolution in America, deploying troops to the US-Mexico border, assailing a constitutional right to citizenship, reversing gender and diversity policies, all but abandoning the fight against the climate crisis and freeing violent criminals who backed him.

The president, back in the White House for mere days, electrified his support base with a series of pardons and actions designed to reshape the nation. From an inaugural address that claimed he was chosen by God to the theatrical signing of executive orders before a raucous crowd, his aggressive consolidation of power has drawn comparisons with monarchy.

But the fast and furious onslaught has met swift legal challenges and political blowback. The pardoning of January 6 rioters, and his suggestion that far-right groups such as the Proud Boys or Rhodes's Oath Keepers have a place in politics, evoked the controversies of his first term.

Trump and his allies had "unleashed a sense of revolution" that the average American was unprepared for, warned Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill. "Folks better make a decision whether or not they're committed to stopping this extremist rightward fascist march the country is on under Donald Trump and who he's surrounded by." Minutes after being sworn in, Trump delivered an inaugural address that tore into his predecessor, Joe Biden, sitting just feet away.