Trump's whips and chains initiative

He has been ruling like a dictator, claiming wartime powers, circumventing the Senate and Congress

- Donovan E Williams

0 th of January 2026 signals one year in office in the 2nd term of office for United States of America President Donald J Trump.

It feels way more than a year.

Trump tried to be statesmanlike in the first term. No such pretense this time around. Ruling with an iron fist, he has ensured anyone revealing just an iota of dissent is not tolerated.

Tariffs massively increased, accusing allies like Canada for deliberately allowing drugs into the United States (US), some of the most sycophantic appointments to his cabinet, establishment and then dissolution of the Department of Government Efficiency agency, establishment of the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency; which has operated like Brownshirt brigades terrorising American citizens and immigrants alike, creating a special refugee process for white Afrikaners from South Africa (SA) because of fake genocide and persecution, publicly dressing down foreign presidents in the Oval Office, denuding the White House press corps of critical journalists, threatening dismissal of late night television hosts who criticise the President, refusing to release the Epstein files; claiming to have stopped seven wars in seven months, crassly coveting the Nobel Peace Prize, insulting European countries, boycotting the G20 Summit in SA and then expelling SA from the forthcoming Summit, bombing Iranian nuclear power stations and Yemen on behalf of Israel; threatening Greenland and Denmark that if Greenland does not form part of the US, then the US will take it, instituting an illegal naval blockade off the Venezuelan coastline, accusing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading a fictitious drug cartel, bombing Caribbean fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela suspected of being drug smugglers and in the final part of the year bombing Venezuela and American troops going in and abducting Maduro and his wife.