The irony of Donald Trump taking his presidential oath of office in the same rotunda where QAnon Shaman wandered unmolested four years and 14 days ago seemed lost on nobody.
Certainly not on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who walked side by side into the inauguration as though pallbearers at their own funeral. If only they could have broken their hips in Luxembourg, then they might have avoided the excruciating pain of Monday, too.
Donald Trump did not merely become the first former president in 132 years to regain his office. He overcame an extraordinary post-presidential impeachment designed to prevent him from retaking office, partisan prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions seeking to imprison him for 717.5 years, civil suits threatening to bankrupt him, censorship from social media companies at the behest of the Biden administration, ideologues in Maine and Colorado blocking his name from ballots, and two assassination attempts.
The Reverend Franklin Graham seemed to grasp the moment more than anyone. He noted that Trump must have noticed the darkness at various times over the last four years. But, he explained, “Look what God has done.”
Donald Trump certainly does just that. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” he explained about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, to raucous cheers as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sat stoically without clapping. He called January 20 “liberation day.”
The speech, solemn and almost platitudinous to begin, shifted toward specifics. He announced a series of executive orders to include declaring the Southern border a national emergency, cartels foreign terrorist organizations, and foreign gangs targets for federal law enforcement. Other executive orders involved revoking the EV mandate for automobiles, providing back pay to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for refusing the COVID vaccine mandate, affirming the existence of just two genders, and stopping all federal censorship. “Never again will the immense power of the state be used to persecute political opponents,” he explained, calling it “something that I know about.”
He spoke of restoring William McKinley’s name to America’s tallest mountain and reflected on the greatness of the 25th president. He accused Panama of reneging on the deal that ceded the Panama Canal to it and vowed to reclaim the infrastructure marvel created by Americans.
The 47th president noted the idiocy of the government protecting illegal immigrants from deportation but not Americans from illegal immigrants, securing the borders of Ukraine but not the United States, and taxing American goods to enrich foreigners rather than taxing foreign goods to enrich Americans. To this end, he announced an External Revenue Service.
He set the “measure of success” as “the wars that we end” and “the wars that we never get into.” He declared, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”
Given his example over the last eight years, President Trump has counseled Americans to “never believe that something is impossible.” He explained, “In America, the impossible is what we do best.”
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