The inauguration speech President Donald Trump gave Monday was even darker than the 2017 inaugural address in which he promised to put an end to “American carnage” and pledged to revive America through the tenets of right-wing nationalism.
Monday he sounded like the Trump we’ve come to know: aggrieved, self-aggrandizing, plotting.
Trump's remarks on Monday were more ominous than his first largely because of his less restrained oratory; his speech felt more like a campaign rally, with his fixation on his perceived victimization, his eagerness to use brute force in new ways and a subtext of vengeance. Moreover, eight years later, we have a better understanding of him. The question of whether to take Trump seriously has been settled: Trump won’t necessarily pursue all of the most extreme ideas he proposes, but he’s certainly capable of attempting any of them. The question is mostly where he’ll put in effort and where he might prevail.
In 2017, Trump outlined MAGA principles, but he spoke in broad, even poetic, strokes and placed an unusual level of emphasis on speaking for “all Americans.” Monday he sounded like the Trump we’ve come to know: aggrieved, self-aggrandizing, plotting.
Trump boasted about his margin of victory and increasing his support among Black and Latino voters. He reflected on surviving an assassination attempt — and described his return to the presidency as the greatest comeback story ever written. “Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback. But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.”
More concerning than his typical displays of ego, though, was Trump’s pointed language about his perceived persecution and his promise to fight back. He framed his election as a “mandate to completely reverse a horrible betrayal” and warned that “never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents, something I know something about.” Given what we know about Trump and his allies’ plans for gutting the Justice Department’s independence and investigating and punishing political adversaries, his promise of restoration sounded closer to a threat.
By inauguration speech standards, Trump got into an unusual level of detail about the policies he was interested in enacting — and it was a laundry list of reactionary policies that will do nothing to restore power to “the people.” He promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which would give the president sweeping detention powers, which some civil liberties experts say would violate the Constitution. He promised to torpedo requirements for auto manufacturers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in new vehicles. He bragged about a new tariff regime while at the same time promising to bring down prices. He made wild, imperialistic threats to wrest control of the Panama Canal from Panama. And his promise to designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations raised the specter of a troubling new offshoot of the so-called War on Terror.
The most galling and Orwellian moment of the speech involved Trump’s lamenting America’s “crisis of trust.” Trump is, of course, a key reason so much mistrust courses through the arteries of the body politic. And his vision for remaking America will do nothing to resolve the underlying reasons that our economy, our government and our institutions are so often not serving the public interest.
Nobody knows how Trump’s second chapter is going to shake out. But his inauguration speech showcased how he remains the man he’s always been. There is no pivot coming. It’s just a matter of what he tries hardest to do — and whether he succeeds.
