Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the US today, promising a slew of executive actions that put America first. Here our columnists reflect on a return to Trump.
Arwa Mahdawi: A rebrand, not a revolution
“Sunlight is pouring over the entire world,” President Donald Trump proclaimed loftily on a freezing cold Monday as he addressed the nation. This speech, he’d promised before the inauguration, would be all about unity. Gone would be the vengeful president whose 2017 inauguration address was famously about “American carnage”; Trump the Destroyer would be replaced by Trump the Unifier. And for the first 10 minutes of his almost 30-minute speech, he delivered on this promise.
He talked bluntly about problems in the US that people of every political persuasion could rally behind – from the government’s “crisis of trust” to a “public health system that doesn’t deliver”. He promised to “bring back prosperity for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed”.
But Trump can’t help himself, can he? Even when talking about sunlight he can’t stop the dark clouds of vengeance from creeping in. He said he wanted to be known as a peacemaker then, in the next breath, threatened to annex the Panama Canal, which he said “has foolishly been given to the country of Panama”. He talked about a “revolution of common sense” then made clear that what he means by common sense is mass deportations, waging war on trans people and ending the Green New Deal.
While today’s speech certainly struck a more measured tone than his 2017 address, it was still Trump through and through: not a revolution so much as a rebrand. And not much of a rebrand at that. There was the usual self-aggrandizing martyrdom, as well as jingoistic stunts masquerading as policy. See, for example, his promise to establish an External Revenue Service and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
It wasn’t what Trump said at the inauguration that sent the strongest message, however – it was all the billionaires and CEOs he was surrounded by. “Big Tech billionaires have a front row seat at Trump’s inauguration,” noted Elizabeth Warren on Twitter/X. “They have even better seats than Trump’s own cabinet picks. That says it all.” Perhaps sunlight really is pouring over the entire world: it has, after all, never been so clear that American carnage has been replaced by American oligarchy.
Moustafa Bayoumi: A mind-numbing affair
Well, that was boring. Predictable, prosaic and propelled by his typical exaggerations of national decay, Donald Trump’s inauguration address was a largely forgettable affair. Even his 2017 address had the memorable phrase of “American carnage”. This time around, we mostly heard a repetitious set of platitudes describing how the “golden age of America begins right now” and that “for Americans citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day”. But liberated from what, exactly?
It’s not that this country is without problems. There are many serious issues to confront, from the climate emergency to access to reproductive health, to name but two that impact the majority of Americans. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as he said he would today from the Capitol’s emancipation hall, will not bring prosperity to the American people. Neither will his newly announced External Revenue Service, a division of the government that Trump promises will enact tariffs on many imports coming into the United States. Experts almost uniformly believe that enacting such broad-based tariffs will raise and not lower prices.
The Trump tradition has long been to promise pretty much everything to voters and blame others when the promised rewards evaporate. And much of it is just fanciful or contradictory. We were told, for example, that Trump will not start any new wars but will take back the Panama Canal. OK, sure.
What’s not fanciful is the fear that will now be felt by Americans in mixed-status households (where a family member is not documented while others in the family are). There are at least 4.7m such households in this country. Then there’s the fear that transgender and non-binary Americans will have after Trump decrees that there are only two genders. We’ve been here before, so we know that other assaults on our daily lives are looming.
Trump’s inauguration may have been a mind-numbing affair, but what’s coming will be anything but. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we keep our wits about us, and be prepared to challenge and confront.
Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
Margaret Sullivan: A grim speech
Newly elected and mustering what passes for his best behavior, Donald Trump spoke of love, of God and of a new golden age for the United States of America.
But just beneath that gilded surface, his inaugural speech sent a different message entirely. Immigrants and transgender people would be treated harshly. A supposedly merit-based system would replace efforts to increase diversity and rectify past harms. Environmental protections would give way to plans to “drill, baby, drill”.
“A horrific speech filled with lies and bluster,” was the apt comment of the scholar and political scientist Norman Ornstein.
As I watched television commentators celebrating the righteousness of “the peaceful transfer of power” – and saw so many whom Trump has insulted and wronged filing in to the Capitol Rotunda – I was thinking about some people who, quite notably, were not there.
I thought of Michelle Obama and Karen Pence, high-profile political spouses who apparently decided not to forget the wrongdoing they and their husbands had suffered. They would not shrug off the times he spread racist lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace or the moments when he put his own vice-president’s life in danger and refused to come to his aid as a violent crowd chanted: “Hang Mike Pence.”
And I thought, too, of a more admirable man who might have turned 96 this week had he lived beyond his mere 39 years.
So rather than quoting Trump’s words, I’ll refer to more inspiring ones from Dr Martin Luther King Jr. “We must accept finite disappointment,” he said, “but never lose infinite hope.” Even on this dark day, that sounds like a plan.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
Lloyd Green: No solace for Democrats
The themes were familiar, the tone slightly different. Donald Trump’s second inaugural address was not a rehash of the speech he delivered eight years earlier. This time, the 47th president called for a “revolution of common sense”.
He had won the popular vote, but dollops of grievance abounded. He reminded the US of attempts on his life and prosecutions that went nowhere. Unstated, the Capitol Rotunda was the backdrop to the insurrection.
Trump’s delivery was generally halting, at times sounding like a laundry list. There was little ad-libbing and no soaring rhetoric. Stephen Miller, Trump’s wordsmith, would not be confused with Ted Sorensen, John F Kennedy’s speechwriter, or with Peggy Noonan, who set Ronald Reagan’s prose to music.
Expectedly, Trump was self-laudatory: “For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day.”
He kept Maga world happy without scaring the Republican congressional leadership -– except for his emphasis on tariffs.
Trump voiced concerns shared by much – although definitely not all – of the electorate. “Popularism” is the word that summed things up.
The speech hammered away at illegal immigration. Trump also took shots at crime and race-conscious government. The US, circa 2025, is not the same place as it was in 2016 or 2020. The murder of George Floyd ended in an unexpected place.
Trump the pugilist was on display too. He vowed to take back the Panama Canal and to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. To drive the point, he gave a shoutout to Manifest Destiny.
Democrats can’t take solace from the text of the speech. The placement of major donors and tech bros ahead of incoming cabinet members in seating arrangements, however, gives Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries something to work with.
Four more contentious years have arrived.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
Malaika Jabali: Trump’s empty patriotism was fully on display
Donald Trump was sworn into another presidential term on the day we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, and Trump made it a point to name-drop the civil rights icon with a vague platitude about making King’s “dream a reality”.
Flanked by tech billionaires, Trump’s presidency is poised to be more like King’s nightmares.
Seated just behind Trump’s family in a prime spot on the inauguration stage were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai. Much has been said about these tech oligarchs cozying up to Trump in the days leading up to his second inauguration. Undoubtedly, funding his inauguration festivities is an investment they’re hoping yields profits for their respective companies. American politics has become so shrewd that the existence of an “inauguration fund” is portrayed as a normal course of business, as if the richest men in the world funneling money to a president deemed a threat to our democracy is as commonplace as a public school teacher investing in their 401(k).
Much less has been said, however, about how this alarming alliance benefits Trump and what it could do to not simply maintain tech CEOs’ profits, but how it could reinforce Trump’s power.
This fealty to industrial titans is something King himself warned us about. In a 1963 sermon, the same year as King’s I Have a Dream speech, he stated: “Our unswerving devotion to monopolistic capitalism makes us more concerned about the economic security of the captains of industry than for the laboring men whose sweat and skills keep the wheels of industry rolling.”
Foreshadowing how technology would undermine workers, King continued: “If manufacturers are concerned only in their personal interests, they will pass by on the other side while thousands of working people are stripped of their jobs and left displaced on some Jericho road as a result of automation.”
Millions of workers have been treated like roadkill, abandoned beside the information highway that enriched a handful of tech entrepreneurs with unimaginable wealth.
The tech entrepreneurs with which Trump has aligned aren’t merely in control of companies that engage in your standard corporate malfeasance – underpaying workers, price gouging, busting unions or undermining striking workers. They control the very information we widely consume. They shape opinions and worldviews.
Many young men devour Amazon-owned Twitch and Google-owned YouTube. Musk controls the app formerly known as Twitter while Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram. What’s stopping any of these companies from prioritizing content favorable to Trump or his fellow Maga acolytes? What would ensure that speech unfavorable to Trump and his rightwing causes won’t be censored, despite the president’s superficial calls for free speech?
Many may be distracted by Trump’s empty patriotism and hollow invocation of American exceptionalism. But underneath it all is another billionaire who, like his tech cronies, is more concerned with maintaining power for himself than empowering the American people.
Malaika Jabali is a 2024 New America fellow, journalist and author of It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On
