Full American democracy is barely 60 years old, yet seems to be in an advanced state of cognitive decline. At his inauguration yesterday, Trump seated the tech bosses, his nerd broligarchy, in front of his supposed cabinet. Needless to say, it was all a hopelessly overstimulating day for Elon Musk, whose double salute on stage later was a pure Dr Strangelove spasm, incredibly even described by the German far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in a statement as “an awkward gesture”. Listen, if your friends won’t tell you, then who will?
As for the staging of the inauguration, which was moved indoors several days earlier, it was an occasion devoid of a sense of occasion. I would honestly have preferred Trump to ride in on the QAnon shaman. Instead, and not to get all British about state events, the world was forced to watch a quite staggeringly inept and lo-fi ceremony. You constantly expected someone to grab the mic and say: “Could the owner of a red Honda Civic please move your car as it’s blocking in the burger van.” Or maybe, as viewers round the globe sat waiting in mortified vain for singer Carrie Underwood’s basic backing track to kick in, to announce: “Apologies, ladies and gents, we have a tech fail. Is there anyone who knows about tech in the house?”
In a manner befitting a modern and correctly prioritised new era, a vast amount of comment was expended on female attenders’ clothes choices, with Jeff Bezos’s fiancee’s outfit coming in for more heat than the decision to summarily rename bits of the world and to annex others. That could be fun to look back on. “Grandpa, what did you say when he said he wanted to retake the Panama Canal, considering the horrifying chain of events that ended up sparking?” “Ah, well now … I think I said something like, ‘Jeez woman can you just put them away for ONE day.’” Having said that, I had a huge amount of time for Melania’s sartorial defensiveness (tailoring by Adam Lippes, millinery by Iron Dome).
The day marked a personal tipping point for Trump, who has now pulled out of more international agreements than Playmates. Among his withdrawals on Monday were the Paris climate agreement, and the World Health Organization, a body that seems to have been about as prepared for this news as it was for the Covid pandemic. Over in the Oval Office, meanwhile, the Diet Coke button has been restored – the least imaginative red button ever to grace a strongman’s desk – along with busts and paintings of admired politicians who are too dead to be able to tell Trump precisely how much they’d have hated him.
By way of background music that actually functioned, there seemed to be a competition between the incoming and outgoing presidents to determine who could issue the most disgraceful pardons, with Trump gifting exoneration to 1,500 of the January 6 rioters like some sort of insurrection Wonka. Meanwhile, Joe Biden took the moment of the inauguration ceremony itself to sneak out pre-emptive pardons for most of his family, an act of such craven shamefulness that the kindest response was to think: you’d better be completely gaga by now because that is seriously the only excuse.
Other corruption news? Well, last Friday, Trump launched a meme coin which reached a market capitalisation of $4.8bn inside of four hours. A former Obama administration ethics adviser assured the Washington Post that “this may represent the single worst conflict of interest in the history of the modern presidency” – ironically, a statement only ever likely to hold its value for the seconds it took to say it. Indeed, by Sunday, Melania had launched her own meme coin too.
But on to Musk, slated to head up the new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which was sued no fewer than four times within its first hours of the Trump administration’s existence, perhaps to be expected in a country where there are far more lawyers than physicians. (Admittedly, several of the latter should be facing lawsuits for some of the plastic surgery on show in the Rotunda good seats.) At the Trump supporters rally after the inauguration, where he unleashed those two eye-catching diagonal arm salutes, Musk promised: “We’re going to take Doge to Mars!” Interesting. Space travel is maybe the least efficient thing humans can do, but perhaps spending potentially trillions to get somewhere that looks like Earth’s most boring disused quarry is the value proposition that Americans concerned over inflated food prices have been looking for.
Other genre-clashing vignettes from the day are too numerous to detail, although special mention might be made of the spectacle of YouTuber brothers Jake and Logan Paul laughing it up with mad-eyed OpenAI boss Sam Altman. We keep hearing that AI can take over all the time-sucking and unpleasant tasks in life, and yet there is not even the slimmest suggestion it can endure this presidency on our behalf. Thus far, the sole thing technology advances have assisted with is making it easier is for those of us screenshotting people’s foolhardy appreciations of Trump’s way of doing business, to remind them of when it all goes tits up.
One thing I can already live without is a rapidly decomposing banquet of the world’s politicians droning on about “reality” and declaring reedily that they are “ready to work with Trump”. The intimation that this is the only “grownup” position doesn’t really account for what many people believe is the most salient fact: that Trump is not a brash but necessary guy, but a serious pox on humanity. Maybe we should substitute the word Trump for a harmful affliction, and see if that feels clarifying in terms of the futility of appeasing him. “I don’t agree with everything smallpox does, but I am willing to work with it.” Actually, having typed that I realise that working with smallpox might genuinely be one of health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s policies. His lawyer has certainly already asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. But remember, if you don’t act like these are people to do business with, you aren’t a serious person.
All in all, vibes-wise, the current moment reminds me of the time I went to London’s Winter Wonderland Christmas fairground, and somehow found myself strapped into a rollercoaster called the Wilde Maus with one of my children, who was four at the time. As we began the creaking, rickety climb up the rails before the first G-force plunge, he said: “Oh. I THINK I would actually like to get off.” “Unfortunately,” I had to reply, “that won’t now be possible.” Ditto this Trump term, and the possibilities of current disembarkation. Of course, this is politics and not a metaphor, so we’re not about to set off on some grim mitteleuropean switchback ride. Then again …
