Live: Trump says he will repeal ‘foolish’ orders within hours of taking office

There are reports Donald Trump could sign up to 100 executive orders almost as soon as he’s sworn in tomorrow.

During his campaign, Trump made scores of promises on what he would achieve during his first day in office.

Here’s a look at some of those plans, and whether or not they can be done.

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During his speech, Donald Trump shared his plans to travel to Los Angeles on Friday to survey the damage of the massive wildfires.

The fires killed at least 27 people and scorched the largest urban area of California in at least 40 years.

The president-elect said he’s praying for the survivors and will help rebuild the city to be “more beautiful” than ever before.

He also mentioned plans to help North Carolina hurricane survivors get “rocking and rolling”, arguing they’ve been “treated very badly as a state”.

Reporting with AP

Vice-president-elect JD Vance met with Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng earlier.

Their wide-ranging discussion touched on fentanyl, balancing trade, and regional stability, the Trump-Vance team said in a statement.

Donald Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration but Xi sent Han in his place.

Vance and Han’s meeting follows a recent phone call between Trump and Xi, in which the two leaders discussed TikTok, trade and Taiwan.

It was the first known phone call between the pair since Trump’s election in November.

Reporting with Reuters

If you’re just tuning in, president-elect Donald Trump has finished speaking at his rally in Washington, DC.

My colleague, Carrington Clarke, ran through some of the key takeaways from the address.

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Donald Trump has been talking about TikTok on the eve of his inauguration. It’s become a hot political issue as he returns to the presidency, after it shut down to comply with a national ban.

“As of today, TikTok is back,” he told the rally.

He says he believes it helped him with the “youth vote” at the election.

“I like it. I had a slightly good experience,” he says.

“Frankly, we have to save it. A lot of jobs.”

The app went dark in the US yesterday (Saturday, local time), but it looks to be coming back today. Trump had earlier posted on social media that he would:

“…issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”

He went on to say that there would be no liability for companies that help TikTok keep running, and that:

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.  By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say [sic] up.”

A few hours later, TikTok thanked Trump and announced it was “in the process of restoring service”.

Here’s our story:

The Village People, whose popular song YMCA frequently featured at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies are now performing on stage. 

True to form, the president-elect is busting a move.

Details on Donald Trump’s “special ambassadors” to Hollywood are still scarce.

The president-elect just touched on the roles during his speech, but we’re still very much in the dark about what the roles will entail.

“You know, I’ve got Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight to become ambassadors to Hollywood, California, to put it back on track,” he says. 

“So they’re all ambassadors, you have to refer to them as ambassador, Mr Ambassador.”

Donald Trump has flagged he plans to hand education “back to the states” during his second administration.

The point came up as he ran through his cabinet picks.

“A very special woman, Linda McMahon, who is going to be our future secretary of education, which we’re going to be giving back to the states. Let the state (sic) run education.

“I said to Linda, I said, ‘Linda, I’m making you the secretary of education, but, if you do a great job, you will put yourself out of a job because you’re going to send it back to the states’.”

Allowing states to enforce their own policies around education is a policy put forward in Project 2025. 

Its authors argue federal education policy should be limited to “empower students and families, not government”.

You can read more about the Project 2025 and the policies it sets out here.

Donald Trump tells the audience he plans to repeal “every radical and foolish executive” within hours of taking office.

“Oh you’re going to have a lot of fun watching television tomorrow,” he says.

“Somebody said yesterday, ‘Sir, don’t sign so many in one day, let’s do it over a period of weeks’.

“I said, ‘Like hell we’re going to do it over weeks, we’re going to sign them at the beginning’.”

Donald Trump appears to have taken Elon Musk by surprise.

The billionaire gives very brief speech, where he promises to “set the foundation for America”.

“So, we’re looking, we’re looking forward to making a lot of changes and you know, this victory is the start, really,” he says. 

“What matters … is to actually make significant changes, have those— cement those changes and, and, ha—, set the foundation for America to be strong for a century… for centuries… forever… and make America great again, yeah!

“Uh, yeah, so anyway, we’re going to do great things here, uh, thank you.”

Trump retakes the stage, running through a list of Musk’s achievements, including SpaceX’s recent rocket launch.

Donald Trump has pulled billionaire Elon Musk up on stage to give a speech.

“We’re going to also slash something else: the waste in our bloated federal bureaucracy,” Trump says.

“We will create the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by a gentleman named Elon Musk, who’s here someplace. 

“I don’t know where the hell he is… He’s here someplace…

“Come here, Elon! Did you see his rocket yesterday, it was captured!”

Also on stage is Musk’s son, X Æ A-Xii, who followed him up the steps.

X waves to the crowd.

“He’s a very enthusiastic supporter, as you can see,” Musk says of his son.

Donald Trump says he will outline an “aggressive, sweeping effort” to guard the US border with Mexico during his inauguration speech.

“The border security measures I will outline in my inaugural address tomorrow will be the most aggressive, sweeping effort to restore our borders the world has ever seen,” he says. 

He goes on to make false claims about violent crimes committed by immigrants. 

“We’re taking in people that shouldn’t be here,” he claims.

“They come in from prisons, from jails — they shouldn’t be here — from mental institutions…

“We have people in our country that are probably worse than [Hannibal Lecter].”

While this has been a common claim from Trump, there is no evidence to suggest countries are emptying their prisons or mental institutions and sending occupants to the US.

Additionally, while Republicans often focus on violent crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants, data suggests this isn’t a widespread issue. 

Studies have found undocumented migrants are far less likely to be arrested for violent, drug and property crimes than US-born citizens.

Texas is the only state that tracks crimes by immigration status and a study published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2020 found “considerably lower felony arrest rates” among people in the US illegal, compared with legal immigrants or US-born citizens.  

Donald Trump tells the crowd his election win in November was the “most epic political victory our country has ever seen”.

“We won the popular vote for the first time of any Republican in many, many years, we swept all seven swing states by big numbers.

“We won them all by historic margins and we won the great state of Florida by 13 points. Nobody’s done that ever.”

If he’d said in “this century”, Trump would have been correct.

Since 2000, Florida has had relatively thin voting margins and prior to his win, the biggest margin in the past two decades had been 5 per cent in 2004. 

But if we look at every presidential election in US history, several presidents have actually won Florida on greater margins. 

That includes Richard Nixon by 44.1 points in 1972 and Ronald Reagan by 30.6 points in 1984.

Trump goes on to claim his victory came despite attempts to rig the election.

“Too big to rig, that’s what I used to say, too big to rig. Oh, and they tried, they tried, but it was too big.

“Around 9.02, they said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here, this isn’t working’. They were swamped, to put it nicely.”

He doesn’t provide any evidence of voter fraud occurring.

Conspiracy theories around missing votes and fraud pushed by both sides since the election have been widely debunked.

Donald Trump has opened his speech with a run-through of the broad themes on the agenda for his second term.

“Tomorrow at noon, the curtain closes on four long years of American decline and we begin a brand new day of American strength and prosperity, dignity and pride,” he says. 

“Once and for all, we’re going to end the raid of a failed and corrupt political establishment in Washington, a failed administration.

“We’re not going to take it anymore. We’re going to stop the invasion of our borders, we’re going to reclaim our wealth, we’re going to unlock the liquid gold that’s right underneath our feed. We’re going to bring back law and order to our cities, we’re going to restore patriotism to our schools, get radical left, woke ideologies the hell out of our military and out of our government, and we are going to make America great again.”

Donald Trump is walking out on stage for his victory lap in Washington, DC.

“What a good feeling! We like winning, don’t we?” he opens.

“I’m thrilled to be back with so many friends, supporters and true American patriots on the eve of taking back our country.”

Two of Donald Trump’s grandchildren, Luke and Carolina, have been brought on stage to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

Held up by their parents, Eric and Lara Trump, the pair recite the pledge into the microphone.

A cheer breaks out as the children finish, and Eric begins addressing the crowd.

“That’s real America, ladies and gentlemen, that’s America, that’s what we love about this country,” he says.

“This is the greatest political movement ever created. And you know what, they tried to stop him, they tried to indict him, they tried to take him down, they raided his home, they went after his children, they tried to bankrupt him, they tried to imprison him.

“They did everything they could to stop this movement and they failed.

“And here we are in Washington, DC on this beautiful day and Donald J Trump is about to take back the White House.”

Inside Capital One Arena, we’re now hearing from UFC boss Dana White, a close friend of Donald Trump.

“Winning this election after everything that’s happened over the last few years is an amazing achievement and an incredible comeback story,” he said.

“Think of all the things President Trump had to go through to get back here — all the powerful forces that tried to take him down: the mainstream media, partisan prosecutors, assassins! It’s absolutely insane what this man has gone through.”

White tells the audience Trump is “the best human being I’ve ever known” and has never asked him for anything.

“America, it’s time to put our differences aside, and we can’t do that if we continue focus on all the issues that divide us, instead of all the issues that unite us,” he continued.

“The fate of this country is tied to the fate of the president, so if you love America, you should want the president to be successful.”

White was recently elected to social media company Meta’s board of directors. 

Tens of thousands of Trump fans braved horrid conditions to try to get close to their returned hero.

First in line was Shah Mahdi who made the 1600 km drive from Prentice, Wisconsin to be in DC for Trump’s second inauguration.

He started lining up on Friday morning, more than 2 full days before the rally was due to begin and slept outside to keep his spot. He said it was worth it to support a man who ‘took a bullet’ for the country and who will transform the country “he is going to fix the economy, build a border wall and he is going to deport the people who break the law, who came illegally, and they have to go back.”

A little further back in the line was 55 year old Carolina Jerez who had made the trip from San Francisco, California with her 29 year old son Efren Delgado.

She was in line for more than 24 hours before the doors were due to open.

She’s disappointed the outdoor celebrations have been canned for tomorrow but says spirits are still high.

“We’ve had nothing but love these last few days, I’ve met people from Australia, Bolivia, all over the country, all over the world, and they are here supporting Trump as well. So it’s very exciting.”

Actor and newly-minted Hollywood “special ambassador” Jon Voight has delivered a brief speech at Donald Trump’s victory rally.

“We’ve all come here to celebrate the greatest win of all time,” he said. 

“The greatest win of all time, the victory we were all fighting for to save our country, our democracy.

“I’m so grateful that I’m able to say that Donald J Trump is the 47th President of the United States of America.”

Voight is one of three action stars who were last week tapped to be Trump’s “eyes and ears” in Hollywood. 

I wrote about that position last week — you can read more below.

Some of Trump’s supporters have waited all day in the freezing cold conditions, only to bail out at the last minute.

What had been a pretty orderly line became a lot more messy as people neared the entrance to the arena.

“They didn’t bother to funnel the crowd and so now anybody walking down the street joins in, and we can’t get into the queue to get in,” said Beth Keyser, who travelled to Washington from Oregon.

“I’m here because this is an historic event and I wanted to be a part of it. And I couldn’t be.”

The arena has a capacity of around 20,000 people but tickets to Trump’s rallies are not limited, meaning people line up without the guarantee that they’ll get a seat inside.

Many of those who travelled to DC for the inauguration had been planning to watch it unfold from the National Mall tomorrow.

But with the swearing in moved inside due to the weather, many are now making alternative plans.

“We’ll probably watch it on TV somewhere,” Beth said.