Trump’s first year of his second US presidential administration began when he was inaugurated on 20th January 2025. His administration has been defined by its significant expansion of executive power, immigration crackdowns, the slashing of federal budgets and agencies, international tariffs and a transactional foreign policy founded on America First values. Trump’s deployment of his loyal, but invariably woefully inexperienced, lieutenants including Elon Musk, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Pete Heggseth and Kristi Noem as major governmental appointees, alongside a range of significant policy shifts has triggered legal challenges, promoted widespread anger or polarised public debate. Trump 2.0 has continued to weaponise (dis or mis) information and communications conduits and he has utilised his celebrity online persona, his charismatic authoritarianism and his symbolic information tools to define his reactionary, ideological agenda. Yet, despite its assorted followers best efforts through obfuscation, denial or redaction, Trump’s second administration has been overshadowed by the scandal surrounding the further revelations concerning the rich and powerful to found in the files held by the FBI on the disgraced paedophile financier Jeffery Epstein, not least those containing information about Trump himself. These revelations may have been motivating factors in Trump’s initiation of Operation Epic Fury co-ordinated with Israel to bomb Iran as a rogue state with the potentiality to develop nuclear weapons.