On the historic first day of his second term in office, President Donald Trump laid out his vision for a bolder — and larger — United States.
“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” he said in his inaugural address Monday. “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
Then he got to work signing a stack of executive orders. He said they included a declaration of a national emergency at the southern border that would allow the deployment of troops, and a national energy emergency that would allow more domestic oil and gas extraction. He also declared that there are only two genders, male and female, and said he would order that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America.
Historians say that Trump made history on his second Day 1 by using what is historically a unifying speech to portray a future that many Americans may disagree with.
“Donald Trump did not do that. This was one of the most partisan presidential inaugural speeches — it was less an inaugural speech and more a State of the Union. He just listed a series of bullet points of projects he wanted to undertake, from deporting immigrants to seizing back the Panama Canal,” said Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Shortly after his inaugural speech, Trump spoke to a smaller group of supporters at the Capitol and reiterated claims that the 2020 election was “totally rigged” — a claim without proof. He also pardoned some of those convicted over the violent events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters attempted to disrupt the certification of the election Trump lost.
“I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs, OK?” Trump said.
Some of Trump’s powerful supporters expressed their joy.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was among the billionaires who packed into the Capitol for the ceremony and hailed Trump’s victory. After Trump was sworn in, Musk took to the stage of the rally at Capital One Arena to praise him.
“This was no ordinary victory,” he said. “This was a fork in the road of human civilization.”
Consumer advocacy groups are sounding alarms about some of the new president’s quieter moves, ones they say seek to loosen regulations and benefit the extremely wealthy.
“When we think about why the incoming Trump administration wants to freeze regulations and halt public protections wholesale, it is at the behest of the wealthiest among us, corporate special interests,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “They are who benefits when we don’t have guardrails on the books.”
Trump did not, on Monday, directly address foreign policy concerns such as Ukraine and competition with China — but Suri said his expansionist rhetoric sent a message.
“It’s hard for the United States to tell [Russian President] Vladimir Putin or [Chinese President] Xi Jinping that they should not seek expansion when our president is talking about expansion, but insofar as we don’t follow through on that rhetoric, we still are on very strong ground to say that invading your neighbor, as Putin has in Ukraine, or as China might potentially do in Taiwan, that is verboten, that crosses the line, so long as it’s just words from us,” he said. “If we were to go to war to try to seize the Panama Canal, that would certainly give a kind of carte blanche to Putin and Xi Jinping, because they make the same arguments for Ukraine and Taiwan.”
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