- What I said about the inaugurations 4 and 8 years ago;
- About Trump’s inauguration this morning, a fact-check of his speech, and how he did not place his hand on the Bible;
- Paul Krugman on lies, David A. Graham on Trump’s 19th-century imperialism, Frank Bruni on Trump’s most memorable line;
- And AP’s site tracking Trump’s presidential promises, which I look forward to checking frequently.
So this time I did watch Trump’s inauguration. My habit in recent years is to watch an hour and a half or so of the Today Show beginning at 7am, for news updates in the first 20 minutes, and then in the background as I dress and eat breakfast and glance at the newspaper (which I read more thoroughly over lunch). This morning coverage of the inaugural began right at 7am Pacific Time, 10am Washington DC time, so it was hard to avoid.
Eight years ago I did not watch the inauguration. Here’s what I wrote then:
I’m not sure I can still keep watching the TV news, including the Today Show. I cannot stand watching the vile, despicable person with his fourth-grade vocabulary who seems to be our new president, nor the simpering propaganda minister Kellyanne Conway, who, if Trump really did shoot someone on 5th avenue, would come on TV the next morning to explain how what he did was perfectly appropriate, and, anyway, Hillary.
There seems to be nothing that Donald Trump can say or do, however vile, that his supporters will not defend, and condemn anyone who does not.
Kellyanne Conway, of course, is long gone. For all that Trump demands loyalty from those he hires to work for him, he has remarkably little loyalty towards them. So many of them turn out to be incompetent or “not very nice people” or whatever other fourth-grade words he uses, and get fired.
\
Four years ago, I did watch Biden’s inauguration. Here’s what I wrote then:
What most struck me today — aside from the moving, traditional inauguration ceremony, with its speakers and singers — were several articles about how supporters of QAnon are apparently astonished that its claims didn’t come true — that Trump didn’t triumphantly appear to arrest or kill Biden and rescue all the babies the Satanists were going to slaughter.
With a bunch of links about Trump, in various ways.
\\\
Today, then. Much was made of Trump wanting to be inaugurated, or perhaps speak, at precisely 11:47 local time, for some kind of symbology of his being the 47th president. They missed it by about 14 minutes. If I understand correctly, Biden’s term ended at noon precisely, and Trump wasn’t sworn in until 12:01pm.
Trump’s speech was oddly deadpan, which commentators said meant he read it from a monitor without extemporizing, and full of his usual nonsense. The US is a disaster, we’re being taken advantage of, yadda yadda. But a new golden age of America begins today. He characterized the past four years as a disaster, with Biden sitting right there. He repeated lies and misrepresentations and oversimplifications.
Trump and his fans don’t believe in facts, but the fact-checkers soldier on.
CNN, 20 Jan 2025: Trump’s inaugural address, annotated and fact-checked
He emphasized God, a clear appeal to the MAGA crowd, and to the Constitution, though his goals involve repealing one of the amendments. He lied about record inflation. The US already produces more oil than any other country. He wants to end every kind of responsible action to fight climate change; drill, baby, drill. He still thinks tariffs will solve everything. He wants to end government censorship, which means fact-checking, which means he wants conservatives to be able to lie on social media. He’s going to pass a law declaring that there are only two genders — yet another example of conservatives needing to reduce everything to black and white, despite evidence, despite the testimony of real people. (What is he going to do with those real people who do not feel themselves to be black or white?)
My favorite fact-check, which I don’t have a link to at the moment, is that Trump rails against immigrants as “asylum seekers” because he thinks “asylum” means “insane asylum” which is why he keeps repeating that point. It doesn’t. He’s a dimwit.
\\\
Trump didn’t place his hand on the Bible while he took his oath of office. Imagine the outrage if a Democrat did that.
Salon, Nicholas Liu, 20 Jan 2025: Trump fails to place hand on Bible when being sworn into office
\\\
Paul Krugman, 20 Jan 2025: The Lies of the Powerful Are Still Lies
Trump ran a campaign based entirely on lies, and his victory doesn’t make those lies true. No, the price of bacon didn’t quadruple or quintuple. No, America isn’t experiencing a vast wave of crime driven by immigrants.
\\\
We all got to see how tall Barron Trump is.
The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 20 Jan 2025: The Gilded Age of Trump Begins Now, subtitled “His second inaugural address promised a ‘golden age,’ but the ideas in it evoked the late 1800s more than any recent presidency.”
Trump invoked a new “golden age.”
Perhaps it would be more aptly called a Gilded Age. Trump was joined in the Capitol Rotunda by many of the nation’s richest and most powerful men, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg. The attendance of the business titans was rendered conspicuous by the small space.
Just as significant was his invocation of “manifest destiny,” a rather outmoded, even embarrassing, concept about American having a divine right to expand and conquer other people.
The speech was saturated with 19th-century imperialism. Trump announced that he would order the name of America’s highest peak to be changed from Denali back to its old name, Mount McKinley, and he extolled the 25th president’s use of tariffs. (Left unmentioned was the fact that William McKinley was beloved, and bankrolled, by the plutocrats of his era, and twice defeated the populist William Jennings Bryan.) Trump also said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” and he promised to “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars,” invoking the controversial slogan of expansionism. Picking up an idea he had voiced in recent weeks, he also vowed to seize the Panama Canal from Panama.
And his presumption that
“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said, describing the failed assassination attempt against him last summer. “Over the past eight years I have been tested and challenged more than any other president in our 250-year history.” (Perhaps he forgot that McKinley was more than just grazed by an assassin’s bullet.)
That appealed to the MAGA crowd, no doubt.
\\
Frank Bruni discusses some of the same points.
NY Times, Frank Bruni, 20 Jan 2025: The Line in Trump’s Speech That Will Echo in Time
Not about being saved by God.
His strangely subdued manner contradicted a ludicrously colossal agenda and an even more colossal sense of self. It’s said that our most distinctive traits intensify as we age, and Trump is that maxim made president (again), his vindictiveness and vanity at their peak.
In one of his speech’s other most memorable lines, he claimed, “Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history.” That’s a crazily reductive read of the American story. I wonder what God would say about it.
\\
What I’m looking forward to is checking sites like this, over the next months and years.
Associated Press: Tracking Trump’s presidential promises, subtitled “Donald Trump made a lot of big promises during his 2024 run for the White House. The Associated Press is tracking some of them. Here’s a look at whether Trump is delivering on key commitments”
He can sign executive orders, but there’s no way he can lower the price of groceries, all by himself, among many other things. Which, if you believe them, was a priority among his MAGA voters. Will they ever realize they’ve been had?
