From its first moments, the Trump presidency defied normal conventions. Witnesses reported that former president George W Bush left the scene of Trump’s inauguration speech remarking: “That was some weird shit.”

The “American Carnage” speech set the tone for a year of unmatched strangeness. Here, we review 12 defining days.

Sean Spicer’s debut, 21 January 2017

It was a whole new world: the Obamas had flown away, Donald Trump had been inaugurated and millions of women had marched in Washington and around the world. Cue Sean Spicer, striding to the White House podium in an outsized suit on a cold Saturday afternoon, roaring: “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe.” The evidence from photos, crowd experts, TV ratings and the Washington Metro network said otherwise. Spicer also accused Senate Democrats of blocking the appointment of a new CIA director and savaged the media: “That’s what you guys should be writing and covering, instead of sowing division about tweets and false narratives.” He swept out, ignoring questions. Two weeks later, Melissa McCarthy performed her impression of Spicer on Saturday Night Live for the first time.

Travel ban chaos, 28 January 2017

Trump ran on a promise of “extreme vetting” and issued an executive order to restrict people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. When the day arrived, he told reporters: “It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.” But in reality there was chaos, confusion and anger after scores of immigrants and refugees were kept off flights and stranded in airports. Even green card holders were being stopped in foreign airports as they tried to return from holidays, study or funerals overseas. There were mass protests at airports in Dallas, Chicago, New York and elsewhere. Finally, a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, granted a temporary reprieve, touching off a legal battle that would run and run.

A prayer for Arnold, the Bowling Green massacre, 2 February 2017

Elected with the strong backing of Christian evangelicals, Trump attended the national prayer breakfast, typically a solemn and sacred occasion. But he could not resist a reflection on his old TV show, The Apprentice. “They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place,” he said. “And we know how that turned out. The ratings went down the tubes. I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings.” Later that day, White House counsellor Kellyanne “alternative facts” Conway described two Iraqi refugees as the masterminds behind “the Bowling Green massacre”, adding: “Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.” The massacre didn’t get covered because it never happened.

The baseless wiretapping claim, 4 March 2017

Trump, who had asserted that he would have won the 2016 popular vote without millions of illegal voters, produced another evidence-free claim when he accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of illegally wiretapping Trump Tower. He tweeted: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” The Saturday morning tirade appeared to owe a debt to rumours circulating on rightwing talk radio and Breitbart News. Obama denied through a spokesman that he or the White House had ordered a wiretap. The investigation into alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election continues to dog Trump.

Spicer emerges from the bushes, 9 May 2017

FBI director James Comey reportedly learned of his firing from TV news coverage at an agency field office in Los Angeles and thought it was a prank. Spicer, in much demand, gave a TV interview in the White House grounds at 9pm, then vanished behind an awning, apparently conferring with colleagues. Finally he walked along a curving path bordered by a hedgerow and faced a dozen reporters and cameramen in the gloom. “Relax, enjoy the night, have a glass of wine,” he said blithely. Spicer then spent 12 minutes in the darkness, against the backdrop of a privet hedge, trying to explain why Trump had taken the most controversial decision of his young presidency – one that could yet rebound on the president as an obstruction of justice.

Covfefe, 31 May 2017

It was just after midnight when Trump sent out a very peculiar tweet: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” A tsunami of Twitter comment, speculation and humour trying to decipher its meaning coursed through the night. Just after 6am, the president woke up, finally deleted the post and wrote another: “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!” Spicer was quizzed about the matter at the daily White House press briefing. “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Covfefe T shirt. Photograph: David Taylor/The Guardian

To this day, the mystery has never been solved, but the covfefe cottage industry now includes hats, mugs and T-shirts.

The 29-second handshake, 14 July 2017

First there was the hand-hold with the British prime minister, Theresa May, the strange handshake with supreme court nominee Neil Gorsuch, the epic handshake with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, and the non-handshake with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Then, during a visit to France for Bastille Day, there was a handshake with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, that lasted all of 29 seconds as the leaders’ wives looked on. Trump went on to enjoy a display of tanks, soldiers on horseback and military jets. Later, speaking to the New York Times, he called it “one of the most beautiful parades I have ever seen” and said “we should do [that] one day down Pennsylvania Avenue”.

Play Video 0:33 Macron and Trump share a never-ending handshake in Paris – video

The Mooch: blink and you’ll miss him, 21 July 2017

A wealthy, fast-talking New York hedge fund manager described by one commentator as “Trump’s id”, Anthony Scaramucci’s shock appointment as White House communications director prompted the swift resignation of Spicer. “The Mooch” made a splash on his debut in the briefing room, singing Trump’s praises, pledging to stop leakers and blowing a kiss to the press corps. The reboot of the administration’s malfunctioning media operation lasted all of 10 days. Scaramucci’s fate was sealed by an expletive-laden New Yorker interview in which he denounced Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus (“fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac”).

Trump talks politics with the Boy Scouts, 24 July 2017

It had been a relatively quite day. But that evening, Trump broke with eight decades of presidential tradition by injecting partisan politics into the National Scout Jamboree, held in West Virginia. He boasted about the “record” size of the crowd, criticised Obama, took a swipe at the “fake media”, reminisced about his election victory and declared: “The scouts believe in putting America first.” And he prophetically joked about the health secretary, Tom Price, garnering votes for a failed attempt to repeal Obamacare: “He better get them. Oh, he better – otherwise, I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’ I’ll get somebody.” Price was forced to quit in September amid criticism over taking charter flights at taxpayer expense.

Blaming both sides, 15 August 2017

A white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violence in which a civil rights activist died. Trump was criticised for a slow response, then appeared to reluctantly condemn the neo-Nazis, then made his true feelings known at a typically meandering press conference at Trump Tower. “I think there is blame on both sides,” he said in a clash with reporters. “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.” He pondered whether the fall of a Robert E Lee statue one week might lead to the removal of George Washington the next. It was arguably the nadir of his racially divisive presidency, though he would go on to criticise professional footballers who “take the knee” during the national anthem.

The anti-Muslim retweets, 29 November 2017

Trump shared incendiary videos from a fringe, far-right British nationalist group purportedly showing Muslims committing acts of violence. They were entitled: “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”, “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!” Their veracity was immediately called into question and the New York Times noted: “No modern American president has promoted inflammatory content of this sort from an extremist organisation.” There was fierce condemnation in the UK, prompting Trump to go after Theresa May via Twitter. Labour MP Stephen Doughty said of Trump: “By sharing it, he is either a racist, incompetent or unthinking – or all three.”

Stable genius, 6 January 2018

Trump was at the Camp David presidential retreat with Republican senators to plot the year ahead. But there was swirling speculation over his mental state, fuelled by Michael Wolff’s blockbuster book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which portrays him as a man-child unwilling to read and unfit for the office. He hit back on Twitter: “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” He added that he “would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” It was not a defence any previous president had mounted. As he approached the end of his first year in office, Trump was again shattering norms – and inviting widespread derision and alarm.