Donald Trump’s most enduring theme is himself, always has been and always will be. He is a poet of self-aggrandizement. Hyperbole is how he lives and breathes. Everything he does is the greatest, the strongest, the boldest. On the eve of his return to the White House, the first former president to reclaim office in more than a century, he promised thousands of red-hatted supporters at a rally in Washington “the best first day, the greatest first week, and the most extraordinary 100 days of any presidency in American history.” There is no need to wait for history to deliver its verdict back in November, when he was defeated Kamala Harris Just four years after voters rejected him, he declared that his return was the result of “the greatest political movement ever,” and promised that his second term in office would become “America’s golden age.”
Trump, who first gained fame in the 1980s for erecting a gilded skyscraper bearing his name in New York, returned to the theme of the Gilded Age on Monday in his inaugural address, which he repeatedly conflated with the country. Will perform again. The speech contained a remarkable statement – that the Supreme Being had called this famous sinner to power. “Over the last eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our two-hundred-and-fifty-year history,” Trump claimed, referring, I believe, to the two assassination attempts he faced during the 2024 election. The campaign and the multiple legal challenges that put him in Ending as the first convicted felon ever elected president. His conclusion? “God saved me to make America great again.”
Trump never mentioned his predecessor by name, but has been more specific about Jan. 20 as “Liberation Day” since then. Joe Bidenthe man who four years ago promised to return the country to normalcy after Trump’s chaotic and dysfunctional first term, but instead paved the way for Trump’s return. Trump said that, under Biden, the country had suffered a “horrible betrayal,” and began his speech by lamenting “America’s decline,” an echo of his famous “American Carnage” speech in 2017. His list of the previous administration’s failures included everything from immigration policy to the education system. Which, he claims, teaches children “to hate our country.” But, as always, Trump’s greatest passion was for things that touched him personally, and none more so than what he said was Biden’s “vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department” against him and his supporters.
It is Trump’s many personal grievances — and his apparent joy at the vindication that his victory represents — that made this inauguration so different from any of his predecessors, including his first inauguration eight years ago. His 2017 inaugural address was the shortest modern inauguration address; Monday was the longest in recent memory, clocking in at twenty-nine minutes. It was an overtly partisan, overtly self-promotional speech — a marriage between a campaign rally and the State of the Union, with no more than a token nod to the aspirational rhetoric that usually makes up the sum of such speeches. Past presidents have used this occasion to speak about the best of our nature, to banish fear and invoke the best of America. Trump offered to “drill, baby, drill” and pledge to rename the Gulf of Mexico as America’s Gulf. Previous inaugurations have been brief, elegiac, and inspiring; Trump’s rhetoric has been rambling, incoherent and stormy. After all, what are we to think about a speech that essentially threatened war against Panama, but never mentioned the deadly conflict in Europe that he once promised to end within the first twenty-four hours of his return to power?
It will always be a day of disharmony. But Trump’s swearing-in in the Capitol Rotunda, forced indoors by cold weather, provided certain benefits of clarity — shedding light on, among other things, who ranks in his second administration and who doesn’t. The image of America’s richest men — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg — standing in front of Trump’s incoming government, and just behind Trump’s children, was a revealing blueprint of power in the new Washington. The absence of crowds cheering for Trump Maga Supporters have only reinforced the idea of an emerging and dangerous “tech minority,” like Biden Beware of Last week, in a farewell speech full of harsh criticism of his successor. As for the traditional powers, such as America’s rulers, they have been relegated to the spare room. Take that, Ron DeSantis.
But on Monday, it was Biden, as much as Trump, who provided a clear explanation of the day’s contradictory messages. Before breakfast, the outgoing president announced that he had preemptively pardoned several of those at the top of Trump’s list of enemies — such as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who challenged Trump, and members of the House Jan. 6 Committee who investigated the matter. for him. Two hours later, Biden stood on the steps of the White House to warmly welcome the man who pushed him to take such an unprecedented step. “Welcome home,” he said. Less than an hour later, Biden, a president who has repeatedly criticized Trump as a threat to democratic norms, pardoned five members of his family as his final act in office, an exercise of personal power that made even many of his Democratic allies uncomfortable. It wasn’t even noon, and the day was feeling dizzy.
Perhaps most disconcerting of all were the painful memories conjured up by the atmosphere of the ceremony itself, inside the Capitol Building, where, four years and two weeks ago, Violent uprising Trump supporters sought to block the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump did not mention the January 6 rioters in his Rotunda speech, but, later Monday, he was preparing to pardon or commute the sentences of several of those charged for their roles that day, fulfilling a campaign season pledge to those he names. Now the heroes and martyrs. This was also an explanation.
Trump’s return to power, at a crime scene born of his refusal to concede defeat, is, to me at least, the most memorable image of the day, and one I will remember long after his promise to “end the electric vehicle mandate,” which doesn’t exist, or bring back Naming a mountain peak in Alaska after fellow tariff-loving President William McKinley. This is who Trump is. I laughed out loud on a Monday morning Wall Street Journal A preview of Trump’s speech, which he promised would be “optimistic” and upbeat. It wasn’t. However, I am fully convinced that Trump’s followers – that is, at least fifty percent of the voters who returned him to power – will soon find a way to forgive him, as they did for the unforgivable events of January 6, when he falls short, as He certainly must, with his extravagant promises of magical transformation.
There is still a lot we don’t know about Trump’s next four years, of course, and it would be foolish to make predictions, given a first term that has seen two impeachments, a global pandemic, and a 2020 election that Trump has refused to accept. But Trump’s inauguration speech showed us that the fundamental truth about his second term is the same as his first — for this president, it’s always been all about him. ♦
