'Trump the Great?'

AUTHORITARIAN: US PRESIDENT STEPS UP POWER MOVES, TIGHTENS GRIP >>> Retribution drive has been perhaps the most blatant flex of presidential muscle.

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Driving in a golf buggy with Donald Trump recently, his 18-year-old granddaughter Kai asked him if there was a dream he was still trying to chase.

"You become president - that's the dream, right?" Trump replied in a video that Kai posted to her 2.5 million Instagram followers.

Then he added: "Now you're president, your dream is to become a great president."

It was a rare personal insight into 79-year-old Trump's grand ambitions a year after he won a second term in the White House, capping an astonishing political comeback.

Yet for Trump, being a "great president" more than ever involves exercising executive power on a historic scale.

And in recent weeks, Trump has accelerated these power moves, taking revenge on his political opponents, sending more troops into more US cities, muzzling the media and asserting control over every lever of government.