Donald Trump has officially been sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
The quadrennial ceremony was moved inside due to cold weather, held in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building — the very place where, four years earlier, hundreds of Trump loyalists violently disrupted the certification of the 2020 election after Trump lost the race to Joe Biden, an event that led to hundreds of participants being charged and convicted.
Though Trump himself received indictments for instigating the attack and doing nothing to stop it (among other actions he took to overturn the 2020 election), he avoided a trial by using delay tactics in the courts. Ultimately, the charges against Trump were dropped by Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith after he won the 2024 presidential election.
Trump took his constitutionally mandated oath of office, administered by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, at noon Eastern Time. First Lady Melania Trump stood by his side, with nearby onlookers including other members of Trump’s family, his various nominees for his cabinet, and the three richest people in the world: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
After taking the oath and receiving a round of applause, Trump addressed the nation, as is typical during presidential inauguration ceremonies.
Trump attempted to portray himself as seeking unity with his political detractors — yet, at various points, he discussed his grudges against his opponents and attacked entire groups of people, making false and disparaging claims against them.
He announced numerous executive orders he would sign later in the day — including orders targeting immigrants and LGBTQ people, directives requiring schools to teach a whitewashed version of U.S. history, and the enactment of a fossil fuel-focused anti-climate energy policy.
Trump also said he would declare a “national emergency” at the U.S.-Mexico border, and would use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to enact his other immigration policies. He repeatedly used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants living in the U.S., calling their presence in the country an “invasion.”
Trump’s speech included a direct attack on transgender and nonbinary people. He wrongly insisted that “there are only two genders: male and female,” and said that he would issue an executive order directing government agencies to follow this scientifically errant and long discredited principle.
Trump also inserted religious imagery within his speech, a clear acknowledgment of the Christian nationalists that supported him during the campaign. The president invoked the attempt on his life from this past summer, for example (an incident he once vowed he would never bring up again), stating that God spared his life that day “to Make America Great Again,” citing his campaign slogan within his storytelling.
“We will not forget our God,” Trump added later on.
Trump also stated that he would “forge a society that is color blind,” and that he wanted to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream come true.” But he also said his administration would end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices, falsely stating that children across the country were being taught “to be ashamed of themselves” by being given lessons describing the history of slavery and racism in the U.S.
He also touched upon his imperialist ambitions, calling for the U.S. to reclaim the Panama Canal after errantly claiming that a treaty with that country had been violated. “We’re taking it back,” Trump said. He then claimed that he would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
Trump wrongly asserted that the country is “rapidly” coalescing behind his agenda, describing his election win as a “mandate” to “completely and totally reverse a betrayal” against him. In fact, Trump won the election without support from a majority of voters, showcasing that his win is not actually a mandate, and recent polling shows that in the weeks since the 2024 election, his statements and actions during the presidential transition period have made Americans less confident in his ability to lead.
He ended his disunifying speech by claiming that he would usher in “the four greatest years in American history,” adding that his administration is “going to win like never before.”
“Nothing will stand in our way. … The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun,” Trump concluded.
Trump enters office with a long list of far right priorities, chief among them a pledge to enact an unprecedented and inhumane mass deportation plan targeting immigrants in the U.S. — a plan that will undoubtedly lead to the separation of families and due process rights being disregarded. The plan will also likely feature detention camps, a horrifying recollection of internment camps targeting Japanese residents in the 1940s and concentration camps in Nazi Germany, critics have warned — not to mention, mass deportation campaigns the U.S. has conducted in the past.
Trump has also shown he intends to govern in fascist and autocratic ways. These include:
Reactions to Trump’s speech were varied, with critics warning that his speech was a harbinger of troubling developments to come.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took note of the oligarchy that would aid Trump during his next four years in office. “Big Tech billionaires had a front row seat at Trump’s inauguration. They were seated in front of Trump’s own cabinet. Tells you everything you need to know,” Reich said in a post on Bluesky.
Lawyer and frequent Trump critic Tristan Snell observed that many of the talking points in Trump’s speech were “LITERALLY a rundown of Project 2025,” a far right manifesto drawn up by the Heritage Foundation that Trump had tried to distance himself from during the campaign.
“Funny, for a guy who tried to say he had nothing to do with Project 2025, he sure is copycatting a bunch of its content,” Snell added.
Imara Jones, journalist and CEO of TransLash Media, called attention to Trump’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
“Trump’s recognition of only ‘two genders’ means a war on trans people, as well as any cis person with a gender expression outside of the gender binary,” Jones said.
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hassan expressed his grievances with those who attended the speech knowing who Trump is and what he stands for.
“None of what you saw today was normal. Shame on those Democrats and ‘liberal media’ journalists who helped normalize it,” Hassan wrote. “A narcissistic insurrectionist using neo-Nazi rhetoric, who should have been disqualified from running, who should have been tried & convicted long ago, is now president again.”
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