Trump Inauguration Day 2025: Highlights and analysis

Trump brings a showman’s flair to everything he does, but this was a new one. After his speech at Capital One Arena ended, Trump made his way to a small desk with the presidential seal on it, where he sat down and signed several executive orders.

The crowd cheered loudly for many of the executive actions — including, oddly, a requirement that federal workers fully return to working in person. That might be the only time ever that a lot of people have cheered a return-to-office mandate.

Claire McCaskill speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

The lesson for Democrats after today is that we have to quit paying attention to what Trump says and pay attention to what he does. Democrats need to point out to the country that in his speech, Trump laid out the largest big government takeover in the history of this country. 

The conservative movement, and all those people who showed up for the Tea Party and Trump’s rallies, think the government is the enemy and it’s too big. So what is Trump doing? In his inaugural speech, he said the federal government will take over the curriculum at your local schools. He wants the federal government to take over local police departments.

This is unbelievably big government at work and that’s not what the people who voted for him want — not even the hardcore supporters who are all in Trump. They’re not envisioning a big government takeover. 

So the Democrats have to show he’s not going to bring down prescription drug costs. He’s not going to lower taxes. He’s going to play around with the benefits you’ve earned. And in the process, he’s doing a big government takeover of things that you should be able to control locally or even things in your own home.

If the Democrats have some discipline about that, I think they’ll have some success in the next midterms.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Over the weekend, MSNBC’s Katie Phang smartly compared Trump’s promised pardons for Jan. 6 rioters to President Andrew Johnson’s issuance of what ended up being thousands of pardons to secessionists who faced off against the Union during the Civil War. Trump has earned comparisons to the 17th president for several years, and I think the pardon comparisons are useful as we reckon with the reality of normalized political violence.

The Equal Justice Initiative’s Documenting Reconstruction Violence project details some of the violence that occurred in the U.S. after Johnson’s pardons — and serves as a warning of what nations can expect when insurrectionists are allowed to roam free and become insulated from full accountability. You can read more here.

Let’s be clear: This entire event is about the “big lie.”

While Trump is rescinding some Biden-era executive orders and speakers have touched on topics such as peace in the Middle East, the subject that Trump returned to again and again in his unscripted remarks was the 2020 presidential election.

“The second election was rigged,” he said at one point.

He also spoke several times about how one of the first things he would do is pardon people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Here are the executive actions Trump just signed on stage at the Capital One Arena:

• The recision of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders and presidential memoranda
• A temporary regulatory freeze preventing bureaucrats from issuing any more regulations
• A temporary freeze on all federal hiring, except in military and other designated groups
• A requirement that federal workers return to full-time, in-person work immediately
• A directive to every department and agency in the federal government to address the cost of living crisis
• Withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty
• A letter to the United Nations explaining the U.S.' withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty
• A directive to the federal government ordering "the restoration of freedom of speech and preventing government censorship of free speech"
• A directive to the federal government "ending the weaponization of government"

Here's a full list of the presidential actions Trump has issued so far today.

The Senate just voted 99-0 to confirm Rubio to become America’s next top diplomat. It marks the end stage of his transformation from one-time Trump to the person charged with winning over allies and adversaries around the world in his name. As is often the case for senators tapped for cabinet roles, there was little sense that his nomination wouldn’t be confirmed as the overwhelming vote proved. 

(Fun fact: As the head of the oldest and most senior cabinet department, Rubio now finds himself fifth in line for the presidency, behind the vice president, speaker of the House, and Senate president pro tempore.)

Trump mostly stuck to the written script for the inaugural address, but he’s now back to his signature meandering style. The president calls this “the weave,” in which he cycles through various topics before supposedly tying it all together in the end.

The speech at Capital One Arena is the straight stuff, with Trump talking about pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, attacking former special counsel Jack Smith, going off on a tangent about wind power, comparing himself to infamous gangster Al Capone, criticizing Biden and talking about ice hockey, among other topics.

Trump’s youngest son, Barron, was mostly out of the public eye during Trump’s first term, as he was still pretty young. But the 18-year-old just had a little moment during Trump’s rally at Capital One Arena, as the president praised each of his family members.

As Trump spoke about his son’s help with the youth vote — by suggesting things like going on Joe Rogan’s podcast — the New York University student stood and waved to the crowd.

But he didn’t just wave. He ran through a greatest hits selection of Trump’s signature moves — from the fist pump, to the pointing at a random person, to the thumbs-up, to the jokingly putting your hand to your ear like you can’t hear the applause.

Some of Trump’s rhetoric at the Capital One Arena is straight out of his campaign rally stump speeches. He even reprised one of his bits about how wind power supposedly means you can’t watch TV if the wind is blowing. (Note: That’s not how it works.)

But the difference now is that some of Trump's vows will actually happen tonight through executive actions he's set to issue, like withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and rolling back other environmental initiatives.