To make way for his new, gaudy ballroom—a temple to his own vanity—Donald Trump ordered the destruction of a priceless, irreplaceable old tree, a national heritage living treasure. Along with the paved over Rose Garden, It is the perfect metaphor for his rule: a conceited vulgarian, rich only in contempt, tearing down what is sacred to build something gilded, showy and hollow. His war on the press follows the same brutal logic, and Australia’s right-wing elites are already learning the tune.

Donald Trump has not restored the Oval Office; he has desecrated it. His proof is just outside the window. To make way for a new, gaudy ballroom—a temple to his own vanity—work crews have already torn out at least one priceless and irreplaceable old tree. A living piece of national heritage, a quiet treasure that witnessed history, will be chainsawed into firewood to satisfy the whim of a man who confuses gaudiness for grandeur. It is the perfect metaphor for his reign: a conceited vulgarian, rich only in contempt, who tears down what is sacred to build some tribute to himself. The room that echoed with Lincoln’s resolve now rings with the bray of a neo-fascist carnival barker—a malignant narcissist treating democracy as his personal mirror.

“The second and final component of the rebrand is for Trump to personally embody that America — to transform himself into the ultimate figure to aspire to. And that part has to do with reviving the old American ideal of individualism and self-reliance, the false notion that the most successful Americans are somehow self-made, and that there is no collective ideal worth pursuing more than one’s own individual success.” Abdallah Fayyad Vox.

Trump’s true enemy? The free press, which refuses to be uprooted so easily. He doesn’t just dislike journalists; he loathes the very idea of an independent truth. His language—”enemy of the people”—is ripped from Stalin’s playbook. “Fake news” isn’t a critique; it’s a weapon, wielded to shatter the legitimacy of fact itself. He threatened the ABC’s John Lyons for probing his murky business deals, snarling that he was “hurting Australia.” When Nine’s Lauren Tomasi was shot with a rubber bullet covering protests in LA, Trump shrugged. The New York Times faces an engineered $15 billion lawsuit—not for libel, but for truth-telling.

This isn’t the rough and tumble of free speech. It is its calculated corrosion. It is the strongman’s strategy: insult, intimidate, delegitimise, sue, and threaten. Trump is the beach bully who kicks sand in your face, then charges you for the cleanup.

And this toxic tide is already lapping at our shores. His contempt has eager students here: right-wing politicians and dark-money operatives like Advance Australia, which parrot his lines about “biased elites” and “corrupt media.” Bankrolled by hidden donors, their business model is pure Trumpist theatre: smear, fear, and the relentless flooding of the zone with shit. They are the local sycophants, desperate for a spin around his golden ballroom, even if it’s built on the stump of a fallen national treasure.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt identified the ideal subject of totalitarianism not as the fanatic, but as those for whom the distinction between fact and fiction has ceased to exist. Trump is the embodiment of this. He drowns the public square in lies until exhaustion sets in, then slips the con through. He knows, as Machiavelli did, that fear is a more reliable bond than love—and he has turned that fear against the institutions meant to restrain him.

And our own leaders? They nod along, practicing their steps for a dance they hope to join. Listen to the parrots in Canberra: sneering at the ABC, accusing journalists of activism, rehearsing the Trumpian script that all criticism is a conspiracy. Meanwhile, hospitals strain, schools crumble, housing collapses—but we pour billions into AUKUS submarines, some obsolete before they’re wet. It’s the same grotesque misrule: serve the public a shit sandwich and call it patriotism.

Trump degrades the White House, turning it into his casino, his soundstage, his grievance den. But if we fall for his local imitators, we degrade our own democracy. The press is flawed, but it is the light. Without it, power hides in the dark.

The bully’s playbook is simple: silence critics, flatter the rich, terrify the vulnerable, and strut bare-arsed in the emperor’s new clothes, daring anyone to point out he’s naked. Our response must be just as clear: call the bluff. Support the press. Refuse to have sand kicked in our eyes.

Because once the bully clears the beach, he doesn’t stop with journalists. He comes for Parliament, for the courts, for us all. If we let Trumpism metastasise here, we won’t just be Waltzing Matilda—we’ll be marching, blind and mute, into bondage, to the tune of a band playing on a stage built from the splinters of our own heritage.