- Declared America is chaos – as Biden laughed behind him
Donald Trump has been sworn in as the United States’ 47th president in an inauguration ceremony held inside the Capitol Rotunda, for the first time in the past 40 years.
Trump has become the second US president after Grover Cleveland (the 22nd and 24th US president in 1885-1889 and 1893-1897), to take office with a four-year break.
The ceremony was a tapestry of America. Patriotism, religion, history, tradition woven together. Iconic. The peaceful transfer of power in this great democracy.
But the speech was Trump through and through. It was the speech his supporters expected. It was the speech his critics expected too.
Delivering his inauguration speech, Trump branded as “disgraceful” the pre-emptive pardons issued by Joe Biden to protect some of Trump’s perceived enemies.
Earlier today, Biden pardoned former Republican politician Liz Cheney, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley and former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci.
The pardon covered all politicians who served on the congressional select committee that investigated the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
“It is disgraceful,” Trump texted our US partner network NBC News.
He alleged without evidence: “Many are guilty of MAJOR CRIMES.”
Trump has repeatedly called for the prosecution of his perceived enemies.
In the aftermath of 6 January, Milley called Beijing to reassure China of US stability. Trump, in a social media post, described the phone call as “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH”.
In December, Trump backed a call for the FBI to investigate Cheney over her role in leading Congress’s probe of the assault on the Capitol.
Donald Trump spoke for approximately 30 minutes in his inaugural address, with remarks that matched the tone of his campaign.
Here are seven key takeaways from his speech.
Reuters
Biden
Trump attacked the record of the last administration, calling it an era of American decline.
Capitol riots
He said the “weaponisation” of the justice department would end, signalling a final nail in the coffin of investigations into his own conduct.
Immigration
The president announced he would sign an executive order declaring a national emergency at the southern border with Mexico.
The government will begin returning “millions and millions of criminal aliens”, he said, an apparent reference to the mass deportation program he campaigned on.
He said he would designate “the cartels” as foreign terrorist organisations.
Foreign policy ‘peacemaker’
Trump said he wanted to be a “peacemaker and a unifier”, speaking of the wars America would not get into as much as the battles it would win.
The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, Trump said, and the US will take back the Panama Canal from China.
It is not clear if a US president has the authority to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the area is considered international waters.
Tariffs
Trump announced the creation of the External Revenue Service to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens”.
Race and gender
“There are only two genders, male and female,” he said, adding: “We will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit-based.”
Energy
“Drill, baby, drill,” said Trump, as he promised to “declare a national energy emergency”.
The administration will end the Green New Deal and revoke the electric vehicle mandate, he said.
The latter refers to pollution standards for exhaust emissions issued by the Biden administration that were expected to halve them by 2032, encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles.
Trump’s tone was precisely what his supporters want.
Effectively he said America is chaos; it’s broken, it’s lawless, it’s leaderless, it’s corrupt.
And Joe Biden had to sit through it all, a metre or two away, wondering surely “how did all this happen?”
“For American citizens, 20 January 2025 is liberation day,” Trump said to roars.
All the campaign catchphrases which propelled him to power were there: “Fix the southern border”, “fix the economy”, “drill baby drill”.
He pledged to remove “woke” from America.
Written with reports from Sky News, TASS