Donald Trump said he would rescue the United States from what he described as years of betrayal and decline after he was sworn in as president on Monday, prioritising a crackdown on illegal immigration and portraying himself as a national saviour chosen by God.
“For American citizens, January 20th, 2025, is Liberation Day,” Trump (78) said inside the Rotunda of the US Capitol, the symbol of US democracy that was invaded on January 6th, 2021 by a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters intent on reversing his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.
The half-hour speech echoed some of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017, when he spoke of the “American carnage” of crime and job loss that he said had ravaged the country.
The inauguration completes a triumphant return for a political disrupter who was twice impeached, survived two assassination attempts, was convicted in a criminal trial and faced charges for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss. He is the first president in more than a century to win a second term after losing the White House.
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“I was saved by God to make United States great again,” Mr Trump said, referring to the assassin’s bullet that grazed his ear in July.
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Mr Trump is the first felon to serve as president after a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.
“Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” he said. “I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do in United States. The impossible is what we do best.”
While Mr Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier, his speech was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into United States and voiced familiar and unfounded grievances over his criminal prosecutions.
With Mr Biden seated nearby, affecting a polite smile, Mr Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor’s policies from immigration to foreign affairs and outlined a raft of executive actions aimed at blocking border crossings, ending federal diversity programmes and overhauling international trade.
“First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border,” he said. “All illegal entry will be immediately halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”
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Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favour with the incoming administration – including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg – had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump’s family.
Mr Trump said he would send astronauts to plant the US flag on Mars, prompting Mr Musk – who has long talked about colonising the planet – to throw his hands up in celebration.
Mr Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of United States and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among US allies.
Following his address, Mr Trump went to the Capitol’s visitor centre and delivered an even longer, informal speech to supporters reminiscent of his freewheeling campaign rallies.
In the later remarks, Trump struck a sharply different tone, voicing suspicion about election processes, calling people charged with taking part in the January 6th, 2021 attack “hostages” and suggesting the congressional investigation into his actions around that day was illegal.
“I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump said.
Mr Trump took the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend” the US constitution, administered by chief justice John Roberts. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.
Outgoing vice president Kamala Harris, who lost to Mr Trump in November, was seated next to Mr Biden in a section with former presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who lost to Mr Trump in 2016, arrived with her husband Bill, but Mr Obama’s wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.
The ceremony was moved indoors due to the extreme cold gripping much of the country.
Mr Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.
Mr Biden, in one of his last official acts, pardoned several people whom Mr Trump has threatened with retaliation, including former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, former Republican US representative Liz Cheney and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley. He also pardoned five family members just minutes before leaving office, citing fears that Mr Trump would target them.
Mr Trump acknowledged he was taking office on Martin Luther King Jr Day and said he would work to honour the civil rights leader’s legacy. At the same time, he said he would issue orders to scrap federal diversity programmes and require the government to recognise only genders assigned at birth.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Mr Trump said, as Democratic US representative Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to serve in Congress, quietly smiled in the audience.
Mr Trump will not immediately impose new tariffs, instead directing federal agencies to evaluate trade relationships with Canada, China and Mexico, a Trump official said, an unexpected development that unleashed a broad slide in the US dollar and a rally in global stock markets on a day when US financial markets were closed.
Some of the executive orders are likely to face legal challenges. – Reuters