The second Donald Trump presidency began on Monday shortly after noon, and his promised blitz of first-day executive orders will soon be underway.
Some expected the tone of Trump’s second inaugural speech to depart from his first, with its grim talk of “American carnage” and denigration of the government he would soon control. Some expected he’d pivot to a message of unity and reconciliation on the occasion of his victory.
That did not happen. The address Trump gave in the U.S. Capitol rotunda today sounded the same dark themes as eight years ago: The establishment is corrupt, the government is broken, the American people have been betrayed, and he alone can fix it.
America can’t protect its own citizens but it provides “sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions,” he said. The country can no longer “deliver even basic services,” Trump said, referring to last year’s hurricane response efforts in North Carolina and the Los Angeles wildfires. Our “public health system is unable to deliver in times of disaster,” and our education system “teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves … to hate our country.”
As always with Trump, his own perceived persecution is inseparable from his vision of national decline and corruption. He decried the “vicious violence and unfair weaponization” of a justice system that has sought to prosecute him for various crimes and declared he has been “tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history.” That ends today, he said: “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal … and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed their freedom.”
But the future is bright, now that Trump has been rightfully restored to power, Trump assured in his second inaugural address. “The golden age of America begins right now,” he said.
He embraced the idea, held by some of his most fervent supporters, that his survival of an assassination attempt last year was divinely guided. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said.
Now comes the promised wave of executive orders. Trump vowed to declare a national emergency at the southern border, halt all illegal entries, reinstate his “remain in Mexico” policy and send troops to the border. He’ll declare drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Though he didn’t mention it in his speech, he’s promised to revoke birthright citizenship for children born to unauthorized immigrants in the future — an order that would be nakedly unconstitutional.
He said he would roll back rules encouraging electric vehicle production, “stop all government censorship and bring free speech back to America,” and implement a policy declaring “there are only two genders, male and female.” Vaguely, he promised his cabinet would defeat “what was record inflation” and “rapidly bring down costs and prices.” And, as he’s done repeatedly recently, he vowed to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and to take back the Panama Canal.
What now? Unlike eight years ago, when Trump was met with a vigorous protest movement out of the gate, there’s a wait-and-see mood in the air today among Democrats and left-of-center people generally. In typical fashion, he falsely declared on Monday that the entire country is now “rapidly unifying behind our agenda” and implied he won a sweeping popular victory. In fact, his popular vote margin was smaller than any since George W. Bush narrowly beat Al Gore in 2000. The opposition may be quiet today, but it’s not vanished.
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Publish date : 2025-01-20 05:31:00
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