Politics will not be the same again in the United States of America, particularly in Washington, DC, where old-school politicians are keenly watching with trepidation as President Donald J. Trump, on January 20, transitioned from the 45th to the 47th president.
The palpable fear is driven by the impending rollout of his revolutionary policies, intentionally designed to change the old world order to a new one, in line with his Make America Great Again (MAGA) mantra.
As President Trump was inaugurated into office under very chilly weather, a majority of the inhabitants of the U.S. capital, Washington, DC—who form the bulwark of the bureaucracy, infamously referred to as the political ‘swamp’—were particularly hit by the cold, beyond their skin, perhaps to their bones. That is because they represent the swamp in Washington that President Trump has vowed to drain.
As the conventional wisdom goes: the greatest threat to man is change. And President Trump has been quite upfront and unabashed about his change agenda.
So, the draining of the swamp, which is a euphemism for removing the bureaucratic bottlenecks that have been clogging the wheel of government in the earth’s most powerful and richest nation, has been assigned to the world’s richest man, Mr. Elon Musk, and former G.O.P. presidential contender in 2024, Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy.
Apart from Ramaswamy being a politician and billionaire, like Musk, he is also a tech entrepreneur, and both have been tapped by President Trump to lead the new department that will drive efficiency in government, known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
It is not surprising, therefore, that President Joe Biden, who just yielded the mantle of leadership of the U.S.—the nation that prides itself as the greatest on earth—to President Donald J. Trump, derogatorily referred to America’s legendary presidential system of government under Trump as likely being a Boligarchy, a parody of Oligarchy, which is broadly defined as a small group of people (in this case, mainly billionaires) having control of a country or an organization.
This contrasts with or is antithetical to a democratic governance system, which is “Government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” a principle that has been in practice in the U.S. since its founding in 1776.
Was the immediate past president Biden altruistic in indirectly painting the just-evolving Trump administration with a black brush when he gave his farewell speech to the nation last Wednesday (January 15) in the following words?
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” Drawing attention to what he sees as danger, Biden stated, “A dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”
He is clearly alluding to Trump’s association with billionaires such as Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (now Meta).
But being an irrepressible politician, the 47th president, Donald Trump, responded in kind to the 46th, Joe Biden, in his ‘victory rally’ held on Sunday (January 19, 2025) in the Capitol, a day before his inauguration on January 20, 2025.
President Trump did so by criticizing Biden’s term as a “failed administration” and promised to “end the reign of a failed and corrupt political establishment.”
Continuing, Trump reminded his enthusiastic audience:
“Tomorrow, at noon, the curtain closes on four long years of American decline, and we begin a brand-new day of American strength and prosperity, dignity, and pride.”
The trading of barbs between the outgoing and incoming presidents of the U.S.—touted as the greatest democracy on earth—exposes the nature of politics worldwide and the reason it is generally believed that all politicians are cut from the same cloth, irrespective of race, nationality, or creed. They never fail to seize opportunities to take jabs at each other in their quest to get ahead.
Ordinarily, one would have thought that, with the Democratic Party having overwhelmingly lost the November 2024 presidential election to the Republican Party, outgoing President Biden would admit wholeheartedly that Americans have rejected his brand of politics and leadership style, and embraced the proposition made by Trump, which he has just begun to unfurl.
But Biden did not swallow the humble pie, as it were. Instead, he opted to sermonize and demonize Trump by alleging that the new president, who is making a comeback after having served from 2016-2020, is a threat to democracy.
Incidentally, that was the central campaign message of the Democratic Party, which obviously failed to resonate with American voters, as their presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, was roundly defeated by Trump.
Following the overwhelming votes cast by Americans—49.8% or 77,303,568 votes for President Trump—this has enabled the Republican National Convention (RNC) to take control of all branches of government: the presidency (executive branch), the Senate, the House of Representatives, and a friendly Supreme Court. Trump’s party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), has now commenced calling the shots, with Trump at the helm of affairs in the White House starting January 20.
With the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, in President Donald Trump’s camp—actually, as his government efficiency czar—having appointed Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as co-heads of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), what is evolving as the Trump Effect will not only grip the U.S., where the legendary Washington swamp is expected to be drained, but it is on track to spread beyond the shores of the U.S. to Canada, Mexico, Panama, Greenland, and Europe, particularly the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, where Musk is stirring up the hornet’s nest by aligning with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, a right-wing populist party in the U.K.
Already, the Trump storm has swept through Canada, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau becoming the first casualty. He has announced his resignation from office rather than waiting to be voted out, owing to his worsening unpopularity.
The likelihood of Trudeau being re-elected worsened due to his sour relationship with U.S. President Trump during his first tenure from 2016-2020.
After his 2023 electoral victory and return to the White House as the 47th president on Monday, January 20, Trump’s threat to slam Canada with a 25% tariff and his contemplation of making Canada the 51st state of the U.S. likely informed a visit by Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s personal residence, to seek a détente. But it appears as though Trump did not accept a reconciliation. Hence, Trudeau opted to step down from leadership of the U.S.’s neighboring country with the longest shared border, rather than waiting to be pushed out by his opponents in a re-election bid.
Just as Canada has already lost its PM Trudeau to the Trump Effect, leadership in the United Kingdom is also being rattled. Trump and his ally Musk have been backing Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party, which made significant gains in the last elections, leading to the Tory party’s Keir Starmer becoming Prime Minister and occupying the number one seat at 10 Downing Street, the seat of power in the U.K.
It is not only Canada and the U.K. that are feeling the impact of Trump’s return to the White House. The rest of Europe, stretching from France to Germany, is also quaking under Trump’s influence. The Middle East is not exempt.
Practically on the eve of his ascension to the presidency, over 400 days (since October 7, 2023, more than 15 months) of war between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East was suspended following a ceasefire deal reached on Sunday, January 19.
President Trump is, in my view, justifiably taking credit for the ceasefire because the deal proposed under Biden’s administration had consistently failed to materialize, even after the administration’s and international negotiating team’s best efforts.
Given that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had defied then-President Biden’s threats to withdraw aid to Israel if he failed to accept the ceasefire terms put forward by the U.S., and Hamas also defied the U.S. by refusing to release hostages, including Americans, Trump’s threat to both parties—that there would be “fire and fury” if they failed to reach a mutual agreement to end the bloodshed—appears to me to be the deal clincher.
Although Trump’s critics would not concede to him the successful execution of the ongoing Israel-Hamas ceasefire, it is no coincidence that both Israel and Hamas accepted the arrangement they had previously rejected on multiple occasions.
China is also under threat of being slammed with a 60% tariff, and the second-largest economy in the world has also sent Vice President Han Zheng as a special representative to President Trump’s inauguration.
The only continent that has yet to receive President Trump’s attention, except for the clear and imminent danger that Africans will be negatively impacted by the new president’s plans to deport undocumented immigrants from day one of his presidency, is Africa.
It is unlikely, in my view, that President Trump will be hostile to Africa. One is convinced that the 47th president of the U.S. now understands Africa better than he did during his first tenure from 2016-2020.
If nothing else, the marriage of Trump’s daughter Tiffany to Michael Buolos, the son of Dr. and Mrs. Sarah and Massad Buolos, who are Lebanese, French, Nigerian and American citizens, has provided the opportunity for Trump to know Nigeria, and by extension Africa, better.
That was emphasized in numerous interventions in my mass media column two of which are titled “ The Donald Trump Africans Do Not Know” and a follow-up piece titled “The Donald Trump Magnus Onyibe Does Not Know”—prompted by pushback from some readers.
Those referenced pieces were written and published in 2022 after personally meeting then-former President Trump and his family.
In my view, it is unlikely that Trump would cancel the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a policy aimed at giving African countries the opportunity to export products to the U.S. tariff-free, introduced during President Bill Clinton’s administration. Rather President Trump is likely to do more since he now knows Africa better as the new frontier .By and large, the sweeping changes that the emergence of Trump as the 47th president of the U.S.—even before officially being inaugurated—appears to be having on the global political landscape seem to suggest that the world is beginning to witness the birth of a new world order, as predicted by political scientist Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at Stanford University, one of the U.S. Ivy League universities, in his seminal books The End of History and the Last Man, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, and Political Order and Political Decay, where he predicted some of the changes the world is about to experience from Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency of the U.S.
Notably, Fukuyama’s seminal work The End of History and the Last Man (1992) posited that the worldwide spread of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism marked the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural evolution.
He argued that this represented a new world order, characterized by:
1. Globalization
2. Liberal democracy
3. Free-market capitalism
4. International cooperation and institutions
Reading through Fukuyama’s books, it appears to me that his vision was one of increasing global convergence, where countries would adopt similar political and economic systems. That is where Fukuyama’s points diverge from Trump’s “America First” mantra.
While Trump’s policies do reflect some aspects of Fukuyama’s predicted new world order, such as:
1. Emphasis on free-market capitalism
2. Skepticism towards international institutions,
it is safe to conclude that the new order being driven by Trump embodies significant elements of Fukuyama’s predictions.
Trump’s approach is more characterized by nationalism and less emphasis on international institutions, which challenges Fukuyama’s vision of liberal, globalized, and cooperative world order.
And the slew of evidence, including plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, make Canada the 51st U.S. state, and take over Iceland from the Scandinavians and Panama as well—voluntarily or by force, as previously referenced—clearly suggests that the return of Donald Trump to the White House as U.S. president is the trigger.
With the influence of his friends and fellow billionaires, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who are business titans with global influence, it is not only the political landscape of the U.S. that will change, but also the entire world’s political landscape, as well as the global business ecosystem, which are all long due and are susceptible to change.
That is because the global business environment, where both Musk and Zuckerberg wield significant influence, will not be shielded from the wind of change.
In my assessment, it is about time the change, which has impacted all spheres of life, spreads to the system of governance, which has seen democracy remaining as it was founded in Athens, Greece—almost in its original form without significant change.
For too long, the world has been fixated on the orthodoxy of the old world; perhaps it’s about time the world responds to another stimulus that is evolving.
As the conventional wisdom goes: the greatest threat to change is change itself. That is perhaps why orthodox politicians are resisting Trump’s proposed changes.
Pundits argue that the trepidation exhibited by traditional politicians stems from various factors, including ideological differences, concerns about the impact on their constituents, and fears about the erosion of democratic norms.
It is indeed puzzling that while technology and economic systems have undergone significant transformations, democratic institutions have evolved relatively slowly.
One of the reasons for this state of affairs might be that democracy is deeply rooted in tradition and cultural norms, making it harder to reform or revolutionize it, unlike telecommunications, which have transformed from the traditional landline telephone and telegram system under Alexander Graham Bell (the founder of telecommunications) to cell phones and email as well as internet, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter amongst others.
Also, consider the case of the concept of money, which has been revolutionized from cowry shells to coins, paper currency, and now crypto money.
Another factor could be the inherent conservatism of democratic systems, which often prioritize stability and continuity over radical change.
This can make it difficult for new ideas or unconventional leaders like Trump to gain traction, especially among those who value tradition and predictability.
Ultimately, the tension between preserving democratic traditions and embracing change is a complex issue that depends on various factors, including cultural context, historical experience, and the will of the people.
Tellingly, the will of the people is a strong factor for the imminent change in the political order in the U.S., and by extension, the world. That is because President Trump has, from the get-go, been upfront about his intentions to, if elected president, embark on sweeping changes that will have a profound effect on the affairs of the world in tandem with the belief that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. So, the world must be prepared to face the complexity of Trump driven new world order.
In conclusion—whether the world likes it or not—Donald J. Trump has returned as the leader of the free world, and humanity must brace up for the change that he has been mandated by American voters to foist on the U.S. and the world.
Magnus Onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, democracy advocate, development strategist, alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA, and a former commissioner in the Delta State government, sent this piece from Lagos, Nigeria.
To continue with this conversation and more, please visit www.magnum.ng.
