In a single eccentric, autocratic year, Trump has already remade the world

The US president is 12 months into his second term and still ripping up the rulebook. What will the next three years hold, ask Giles Whittell and Hugh Tomlinson

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JANUARY 2023 Inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January.

(Kenny Holston/AP/Getty Images)

Don Bacon is bewildered. He served for 29 years in the US air force and represents the red state of Nebraska in the House of Representatives. He believes in the Bible, the constitution and America, and considers himself a loyal member of the Republican party.

But last Wednesday his Republican president warned Denmark that the US needed to own Greenland whatever the outcome of talks that day between their respective prime ministers and his vice-president. Worse still, for Bacon, Donald Trump did not take the military option off the table.

"That is despicable," he says. "I don’t think he’s serious but we've got to address it. And if he used force I think it would be the end of his presidency." Bacon will not be standing in this year’s midterms and feels free to speak his mind, but he says that in closed-door meetings last week with fellow Republicans there was broad agreement that threatening or invading a Nato ally were impeachable offences.

"The vast majority in Congress know this is wrong," he says. "All he’s doing is making enemies. It should bother every American. Threatening a Nato ally is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of."

A day earlier, Trump had surged extra ICE officers into Minneapolis, a week after one of them killed Renee Good with at least three shots at close range. The next day the president greeted María Corina Machado, leader of Venezuela's democratic opposition, at the White House. When she presented him with the Nobel peace prize she won last year, he accepted it as reward "for the work I have done".