Cue the triumphant Khachaturian!
It was a cold night filled with the warm laughter of tens of thousands of ultra-MAGA fans, hats and furs and sparkly cowboy boots, wandering through the streets of Washington and dodging unnecessary yet unremoved roadblocks. The most common pair was older gentlemen in traditional tuxes accompanied by women decades younger glammed to the max (though maybe not so far as Lauren Sanchez). As inaugurations go, this was by far the most stylish ever — and rare, for a Republican inauguration, filled with recognizable celebrities, athletes, tech billionaires and figures from the new media world who helped elevate Trump to the presidency front and center.
Here’s the rundown of the Capitol One rally at The Spectator:
The boos from the crowd as they viewed the live televised entrance of the Clintons, the Bushes, President Obama and Vice President Mike Pence into the Capitol’s rotunda were overshadowed by the cheers that followed President Trump’s second first presidential speech. The loudest exclamations came when President Trump promised to sign a series of historic executive orders, including declaring a national emergency at the southern border, issuing a mandate to “drill, baby, drill” and the declaration that “there are only two genders: male and female.”
After the inaugural screening, the pomp and circumstance made its way to the Capital One Arena. The crowd was warmed up by speakers such as Elon Musk and Kash Patel followed by swells from military brass bands as they performed in welcoming of their new commander-and-chief. To the applause of his supporters President Trump gradually made his way to sit on stage beside his family and that of the Vice President J.D Vance. Then, the parade began. Cheerleaders, firefighters, drum majors and healthcare workers marched through the carpeted basketball court to the rhythm of drums, brass, bagpipes and even more drums.
It wasn’t all celebration, however. The parade began with a moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who was killed at the assassin attempt on President Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, and it book-ended with a standing ovation for the families of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.
Then he spoke. President Trump shared his gratitude for his family and supporters before explaining many of the policies that he would sign into effect in the next few days. “You’re gonna be happy reading newspapers tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and the next day,” he said.
Moments later many of the promises made were fulfilled right then and there. President Trump made his way to the desk parked on the right side of the stage and signed several executive orders as nearly 20,000 people peered over his shoulder. These included no tax on tips, a hiring freeze of IRS agents, a withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, and rescinding seventy-eight of President Biden’s executive orders. Following this act, he grabbed the pens he used to sign these executive orders and threw them into the roaring crowd before making his way off stage.
At the Oval Office on Monday, Trump signed pardons for some 1,500 January 6 participants, saying, “This is a big one. We hope they come out tonight.”
A relaxed and playful Trump invited the cameras in as he sat behind the Resolute Desk shortly before 8 p.m. and signed executive order after executive order, casually answering journalists’ questions as he changed the course of the country — and often the planet — with each stroke of the pen.
Mightier than the sword: Between the Oval Office sign-a-thon and his earlier appearance on stage at the Capital One arena — pen, once again, in hand — Trump dispatched a bewildering number of executive orders through the course of the late afternoon. He may have been “flooding the zone” (h/t Steve Bannon, again) but this was ultimately government as entertainment show, with the Capital One crowd cheering as Trump signed away U.S. membership of the Paris climate accords before their eyes. Later, in the Oval Office, the president even offered journalists a running commentary — “ooh, this is a big one,” he smiled, pulling America out of the World Health Organization — as aides handed over order after order for him to sign.
We got the TikTok stay of execution … A back-to-the-office mandate for federal workers … A federal hiring freeze … The renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali … Emergency measures on energy and immigration … and much, much more. The only area which underwhelmed was tariffs, with no more than an investigation pledged into possible new levies on goods from China, Mexico and Canada.
So what happens next? That’s a little less clear. “It’s not yet known which of Trump’s exhaustive list of executive actions will have immediate impact, which are purely symbolic, and whether Congress or the courts can limit their impact,” note our colleagues Alice Miranda Ollstein and Myah Ward in their essential write-through of the day. Josh Gerstein reports that Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship — currently protected by the 14th Amendment — has already been hit by a legal challenge from immigrants’ rights activists. But the message being sent to MAGA-land is crystal clear — and they’re loving every minute.
The moment of the evening … came when Trump was asked if outgoing President Joe Biden had left the traditional letter of advice for his successor in the Resolute Desk. Trump opened a drawer and pulled the historic letter out, apparently for the first time, the number “47” visible in Biden’s handwriting upon the envelope. The president suggested he might even open and read the letter right there, before the cameras. In the end, he smiled and put it back in the drawer ... Even Trump has his limits.
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