“We talk about America’s system of government,” New York Times columnist Ezra Klein said after Trump’s inauguration, “as if it is a solid thing, bound by the constitution and institutions the way a belt cinches around the waist. But it’s really just a pile of norms in a trenchcoat. Knock the norms down and everything changes.” Trump’s very purpose is to knock them down, but in some ways, he is only accelerating a process that had already started.

Take Trump’s order to construct a migrant detention centre in Guantánamo Bay – a space that has for years operated outside international law despite outcries and appeals for closure. Hundreds of prisoners were kept there under military law, often following rendition, disappearance and torture at CIA black sites. Trump’s proposal to detain tens of thousands of migrants there is an outrageous move, but it is not an aberration. He is building, literally, on what came before him. Long before the second Bush administration used the facility to hold and abuse nearly 800 Muslim men and boys as part of its ‘war on terror’. Last year, the Biden administration awarded a private contractor over $160m (£130m) to run the facility.

The same goes for Trump’s withdrawal from international organisations such as the World Health Organization and his imperial adventurism when it comes to foreign policy. The US has a long record, under much more gentlemanly presidents, of breaking international law, insulting international institutions and embarking on unilateral campaigns licensed by its superpower status. Over two decades ago, Congress passed a law authorising “all means necessary and appropriate” to “free US or allied personnel detained by or on behalf of the International Criminal Court”.

The danger comes from assuming that Trumpism comes out of nowhere. In fact, it comes from many sources, but one of them is his predecessors’ creation of a political system in which serial breaches are seen as acceptable because they are done by the right people. Well, to millions of people, Trump is the right person.