Newly sworn-in President Donald Trump revisited old gripes and grievances in a rambling speech in the overflow room in Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol after seeing off former President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
“This was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump told the gathered crowd following his inaugural address in the Capitol Rotunda. Trump once again pushed the baseless lie that the 2020 election was stolen and threatened former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who did not attend the proceedings.
Trump indicated that he didn’t regret holding the inauguration indoors because of the frigid temperatures.
“I looked I said, ‘Oh, look at this beautiful, sunny day. We blew it, we blew it.’ And then I went outside, and we were afraid that you would have been very unhappy. The sun was very deceptive. I will tell you, it is cold out,” said Trump. “The outdoor thing is really good, but it gets a little cold around this time of the year. Some people have noticed, and a lot of times, they suffer through it. There was no suffering in that room. It was 72 degrees.”
The president praised his new Vice President J.D. Vance, calling him “very upwardly mobile,” adding that he “picked it up so quickly” as his running mate after a “tough” first week when he was attacked by the “fake news.”
“But after that, it was smooth sailing,” said Trump.
“He took on the meanest... I don’t want to use the word corrupt because we’re into a new system. Let’s wait until the corruption begins. Because it will,” he added.
Trump subsequently once again called the January 6 rioters behind bars “hostages” and falsely suggested that Pelosi was behind the violence of that day.
He also called the members of the January 6 House Select Committee, who were pardoned by Biden in last-minute measures, “political thugs” whom he said were guilty of “very bad crimes.”
Trump once again claimed that Pelosi “turned down the offer of 10,000 soldiers — you could have had 500, and it would’ve stopped,” the president said of the Capitol riot.
“There would have been no J6,” the president claimed.
“Maybe she wanted that to happen,” he added, before going on to repeat his claims, without proof, that the January 6 committee deleted evidence.
“She’s guilty as hell,” Trump said of Pelosi. “That’s a criminal offense.”
Trump appeared to suggest that pardons for January 6 rioters are on the way, saying, “I was going to talk about the J6 hostages. But you’ll be happy because, you know, it’s action, not words that count. And you’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages.”
The president questioned Biden’s pardons for the likes of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley and former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger - all of whom spoke out or helped investigate the Jan. 6 riots.
His return to his greatest hits didn’t stop there. Returning to his false claims surrounding elections, Trump suggested he would’ve won the heavily blue state of California had it not been for election fraud as he ranted about voter ID legislation.
The president went on to argue that inflation wasn’t the No. 1 issue of last year’s election.
“I think people coming into our country from prisons and mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that I know,” Trump said.
“How many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost?” Trump asked the silent crowd as he argued that he hit inflation “hard” but would then go back to immigration.
Trump also suggested that he “fixed” the border during his last term in office before he went on to claim that the 2020 election was “totally rigged.”
“You know the only thing good about it — it showed how bad they are, showed how incompetent...” Trump said.
He went all the way back to the 2016 election, reminiscing about how “We took on Hillary. She didn’t look too happy today. We defeated Hillary and we did much better the second time in 2020.”
