'Authoritarian in the White House' What experts are expecting from Trump 2.0

What experts are expecting from Trump 2.0

- David Smith

At 2:25 am, Donald Trump gazed out at his jubilant supporters wearing "Make America great again" hats. He was surrounded by his wife, Melania, and his children, the stars and stripes, and giant banners that proclaimed "Dream big again" and "Trump will fix it!"

"We're going to help our country heal," Trump vowed. "We have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders; we're going to fix everything about our country, and we've made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that."

Having risen from the political dead, the president-elect was already looking ahead to what he called the "golden age of America"—a country that had just shifted sharply to the right. And at its core was the promise of Trump unleashed: a radical expansion of presidential power.

The 45th and 47th commander-in-chief will face fewer limits on his ambition when he is sworn in again in January. He returns as the head of a Republican party remade in his image over the past decade and as the architect of a right-leaning judiciary that helped eliminate his legal perils. Second time around, he has allies across Washington ready to enforce his will.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former Republican congressional aide, said: "What we're going to have is an imperial presidency. This is going to be probably the most powerful presidency in terms of centralizing power and wielding power that we've had probably since FDR [Franklin D Roosevelt, president from 1933 to 1945]."