Over at CNN, Stephen Collinson has offered his regular analysis of US political events, writing of yesterday:
The new president set off simultaneous political alarms in multiple foreign capitals with off-the-cuff foreign policymaking, instantly turning the US away from the internationalism embraced by every president apart from him since the second world war.
In a freewheeling news conference back in the Oval Office, Trump demonstrated a capacity to drive his own message and move geopolitical chess pieces in public in a way that Biden lost when age caught up with him. The imagery was of a well-briefed new president eyeing big goals, confident that his first term gives him a heads-up on how to wield the levers of power and determined to make the most of a second chance.
But Trump also laced the pageantry of inauguration day with rally-style grievance politics and vast doses of untruths, twisted facts and an increasingly messianic sense of his own power, which was a foreboding omen for the rule of law.
