Skip to content

The shortest possible recap of Donald Trump’s inauguration speech

Donald Trump's inaugural address was surprisingly low key and consisted mostly of a laundry list of the executive orders he plans to sign later today. Some highlights:

  • Trump declares an emergency at the southern border even though there's patently no emergency at the moment.
  • Trump reinstates "Remain in Mexico," but can he do that without Mexico's cooperation?
  • He's going to tell everyone in his administration to bring down prices. Um, sure.
  • He's declaring a national energy emergency. What emergency?
  • The Green New Deal is dead.
  • Trump lies yet again that tariffs are a tax on foreign nations.
  • No more government censorship! Not that there ever was.
  • Law and order! But crime is at a historic low already.
  • No more pronoun nonsense. We have men, women, and nothing in between.
  • He's seriously planning to change "Gulf of Mexico" to "Gulf of America." Also, Denali will be renamed back to Mt. McKinley. And Panama is treating us unfairly so we're going to take the canal back. This comes minutes after saying his deepest wish is to be known as a unifier and peacemaker.
  • From this day forward America will be a free and sovereign nation. What?

62 thoughts on “The shortest possible recap of Donald Trump’s inauguration speech

    1. aldoushickman

      That's unfair to clowns, who are professionals who work hard at their craft. A clown president would, if nothing else, mean we were in for some amusing/tiresome pantomime pratfalls and balloon animals.

      Trump is an angry dumbass, a venal chaos muppet. We're in for corruption, exhausting nonsense, and collective embarrassment, at best.

  1. orion

    I think this format worked to his advantage...gave it more of a partisan state of the union feel than it would have with the typical outdoor crowd further away, even though the numbers would have been greater.
    But I don't live in the right-wing media bubble so I didn't recognize the world he thinks we live in.

    1. erick

      The whole Denali thing perfectly incapsulates the absurdity of the modern Republican Party.

      In Alaska basically everyone has always called it Denali, the position of virtually every politician of both parties since there has been an Alaska has been that it should be renamed Denali. Obama renamed it Denali, Fox interviews Sarah Palin, who again like virtually every Alaska politician has always said it should be renamed Denali, she said that is true but Obama did it the wrong way for reasons…

      1. Srho

        Combination of "because Obama did it" and to cheese off Sen. Lisa Murkowski for voting to convict him. Notice he didn't reverse Obama's naming in his first term, only after LMurk stood against him. (I mean, she's been openly against him since the Access Hollywood tape, but the impeachment trial was a breaking point.)

    1. FrankM

      I'm on record as predicting he won't go quietly and will come up with some nonsense about how the 22nd Amendment doesn't apply to him.

      1. ProgressOne

        He may try, but he'll have no path to impose his BS opinions on us.

        Also, consider that primary campaigns will start ~1.5 years before he leaves office. So he’d have to say he is running at some point, and massive pushback would ensue.

          1. Yehouda

            The "two toadies" route is clearly compatible with the constitution.
            "one today" not that clear, but certainly it is not obvious that it is not compatible. It is discussed in the link I gave.

        1. KenSchulz

          Or, if the Republicans control the House an White House, he can be elected Speaker, and ascend to the Presidency when the elected POTUS and VP resign, or are defenestrated a la Putin.

      2. Anandakos

        There are enough states with Secretaries of State who would refuse to put him on the ballot for him to have an extremely difficult time getting to 270.

        1. Yehouda

          The "two toadies" route means his name is not appearing on the ballots at all, so if he uses this route the Secretaries cannot do anything.
          With the "one toadie" it may be an issue. But if he scares or kills all serious democrat contenders, he can easily win anyway. The main question is whether he will be able to do that in 2027-2028.

  2. Brett

    It's going to be an active couple months for lawyers on our side, fighting whatever nasty executive orders he's going to dump immediately.

  3. Cycledoc

    Lies about everthing, delusions of grandeur, acts impulsively and aggressively, thinks he can get away with crimes (he did it!), multiple bankruptcies, everything is about power and money. He's a psychopath.

  4. Josef

    "...his deepest wish is to be known as a unifier and peacemaker." He does like talking out both sides of his mouth. He'll be known as a grifter and bully. What's he's always been known for to anyone paying attention.

  5. realrobmac

    Does the president actually have some kind of power to name geographical features? Could he rename the Potomac River as the Trump River? And San Francisco Bay as Ivanka Bay? I never knew the president had such a power.

    Maybe we just rename Mexico itself as Bad Hombreland? I mean why now?

      1. NotCynicalEnough

        I expect that DOGE will nix any and all renaming as it is expensive and accomplishes nothing. Or at least I expect that as much as I expect flying pigs.

  6. DFPaul

    Very smart con man -- the best the world has even seen, if you ask me. I assume by the end of the week, he'll be taking credit for lower inflation, less crime etc. And then we'll argue with his cult about that...

  7. kathleent

    Post Inauguration re-cap - whine, whine, whine, blame, lie, fabricate, rant, rant, ramble word salad, drift, drift........had to turn if off.....my capacity for BS has hit maximum tolerance.

    1. Art Eclectic

      Bitcoin uses massive amounts of energy and we're going to use Bitcoin to make everyone wealthy, hence the national energy emergency.

  8. Crissa

    The President just declared war on every intersex, non-binary, and trans person.

    Next time someone tells me to stop being political, I'm going to shove this down their throat so far. (Not physically).

    1. Art Eclectic

      When they start building camps in Texas, you need to be worried and have a plan to get out of dodge. Immigrants today, you tomorrow.

  9. FrankM

    Also, he's going to abolish birthright citizenship by executive order.

    Repealing the laws of arithmetic will have to wait until Day #2..

        1. NotCynicalEnough

          You forgot Kavanaugh. As always, as textualists and originalists, the words in the Constitution mean exactly what they want them to mean no more, and no less. And they don't have to have the same meaning all of the time.

  10. cmayo

    "From this day forward America will be a free and sovereign nation. What?"

    Dog whistle. Or did you think the "don't tread on me" and tea party shit came from nothing?

  11. Gary Goldberg

    How can you EO an end to a political theory like the Green New Deal? Will the Department of Thought Police enforce it?

  12. msobel

    I've found that in order to maintain contact with reality, a convenient praxis, (because Trump will lie about anything) is to substitute "Trump said," with "Trump lied."

    for example:

    "Trump declares an emergency at the southern border even though there's patently no emergency at the moment.
    Trump reinstates "Remain in Mexico," but can he do that without Mexico's cooperation?"
    often shortened to "Trump said that he would close the border."

    should be mentally recast as "Trump lied that he would close the border."

    E.g as you pointed out

    Next week’s ICE raid is just theater https://jabberwocking.com/next-weeks-ice-raid-is-just-theater/

  13. KJK

    Frankly, I am relying on the Coronation recap from KD (and all my Trump related news), since watching any channel for news or opening up any news website will inflict upon me the site of that fucking orange face, and include the risk of hearing the bull shit spewing from it for the few seconds it takes to change the channel or shut off the device.

  14. Salamander

    This morning, even NPR (!!!) would not name the person who said a true thing about the Criminal in Chief, nor actually quote them; just an allusion that "someone said something along the lines of."

    Because the First Criminal is still suing people and organizations right and left (but mainly left), even as he squats, toadlike, in the once-hallowed White House. He's got near-infinite power and an infinite budget. You never know if you will be next.

    The chilling effect has set in.

  15. DFPaul

    Watched on Youtube. I'd say it was a speech heavy on culture war stuff, and remarkably light on doing stuff for the common man etc etc. There was a lengthy section about Panama and the fact (he said) that China is now running the canal. I think he is boxing the Rs into the billionaire camp for the upcoming battle over taxes and deficits. Here's hoping the Dems are smart enough to recognize the opening he is leaving them.

    1. DFPaul

      There was a fair amount of stuff you could view as payback to the oil and gas industry. Drill baby drill etc.

      No mention of abortion. No mention of Obamacare.

      Overall I'd say Trump seems to know his "agenda" is unpopular and that he's gotta whip up a lot of America First kind of stuff -- like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, gonna be interesting to see how Apple Maps goes on that one, plus whatever nav system is in Teslas -- to be popular.

      1. aldoushickman

        "payback to the oil and gas industry"

        On this point, if I were in the oil and gas industry, I'd be looking for ways to get out of it. US oil consumption peaked in 2006, and GDP has doubled since then. Long term, oil is not needed for growth, and will be a declining share of the economy, no matter what lame-duck-from-inauguration-day Trump has to say about it.

        1. KenSchulz

          The government can open more Federal lands to exploration and sell leases, but the oil companies decide whether or not to bid and/or drill. They already own rights they aren’t exercising until and unless the price rises enough to make extraction economical.

  16. OldFlyer

    The cruel BabyBoomer Irony

    Issues Baby Boomers protested for, and received, thanks to legislation passed by our (Greatest Generation) parents:
    Higher Ed Financial help
    Race Equality
    Environment
    Universal Health Care for all
    Women’s Choice

    All being systematically undone by . . . a Baby Boomer

Comments are closed.