Donald John Trump completed an extraordinary return to power on Monday as he was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States and opened an immediate blitz of actions to begin drastically changing the course of the country and usher in a new “golden age of America.”
In a triumph of the man and his movement, Mr. Trump took the oath of office during a ceremony in the Capitol four years after he was evicted by voters, reinvigorated for another term aimed at remaking America in his vision. He wasted no time outlining an ambitious program of often divisive policies to “reclaim our Republic” and purge its enemies and his own.
“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and, indeed, their freedom,” Mr. Trump said during a 29-minute Inaugural Address as former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former Vice President Kamala Harris looked on. “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”
Feeling vindicated by voters after impeachments, indictments and conviction on 34 felony counts, Mr. Trump claimed a personal mandate as well as a political one. “Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” he said. “But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.”
Indeed, he saw divine intervention in his restoration to the White House, citing his close call during an assassination attempt this summer when a bullet nicked his ear. “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason,” he said. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Mr. Trump was inaugurated in the same building where a mob of his supporters rampaged four years ago in a failed effort to reverse the results of an election that he lost, culminating one of the most astonishing comebacks in U.S. history. In a stark sign of the changing power dynamics in America, Mr. Trump in the evening pardoned nearly all 1,600 rioters for their roles in the attack and commuted the sentences of another 14.
Mr. Biden, wary of Mr. Trump’s threats of “retribution” against perceived enemies, used his final hours in power to use the pardon power himself to thwart possible political prosecutions by his successor. Mr. Biden pardoned five members of his family, including his two brothers, as well as other figures who had been targeted by Mr. Trump, like former Representative Liz Cheney, the retired Gen. Mark A. Milley and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.
But Mr. Biden, who for years has warned that Mr. Trump posed a threat to democracy, nonetheless observed the rituals of the day, unlike his predecessor who four years ago refused to concede or attend the inauguration. Mr. Biden, by contrast, graciously hosted Mr. Trump for coffee at the White House before the ceremony.
“Welcome home,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, when they arrived at the executive mansion.
Mr. Trump moved quickly beyond Inauguration Day ceremonies to put his stamp back on the government as he signed the first of as many as 100 orders and actions. He declared a national emergency at the southern border and said he would send the military to guard it. He said he would end government programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. He said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and promised to seize the Panama Canal. “We’re taking it back,” he said.
He signed orders in the early evening rescinding 78 of Mr. Biden’s executive actions, blocking new regulations, freezing federal hiring, pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord again and directing agencies to end “government censorship” and the “weaponization” of the Justice Department.
He signed a directive denying citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States, in defiance of the longstanding interpretation of the 14th Amendment, a move that drew an instant lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Much as he did eight years ago, when he denounced “American carnage” in his first Inaugural Address, Mr. Trump painted a grim portrait of a country on its knees that only he could revive. But even more than in 2017, he largely dispensed with lofty themes and the broad unifying strokes favored by most presidents after taking the oath and instead detailed specific policies he would enact.
Mr. Trump spoke of “national unity” but made no nod toward Democrats in the speech and offered no thanks to Mr. Biden, as other presidents have done for their predecessors. Indeed, the nation’s 60th inauguration quickly took on the feel of a State of the Union address as Republicans jumped to their feet to applaud particular plans announced by the new president while Democrats sat mute and apparently uncomfortable.
Sitting a few feet away, Mr. Biden stared downward during some of the speech, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at one point even laughed at what she seemed to think was the absurdity of the Gulf of Mexico line. Elon Musk, the new president’s billionaire patron and owner of SpaceX, pumped his fists in the air when Mr. Trump said he hoped to send “American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. administered the 35-word oath of office to Mr. Trump at 12:01 p.m., a minute after the constitutionally prescribed time, during a ceremony that the president-elect’s team moved indoors citing the cold weather. James David Vance was sworn in a minute before as the nation’s 50th vice president by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Mr. Trump, 78, became the oldest person inaugurated as president, eclipsing Mr. Biden, who was five months younger when he took the oath four years ago. Mr. Vance, 40, by contrast, became the third-youngest vice president in history.
Mr. Trump also became only the second president since the founding of the Republic to reclaim the White House after being defeated for re-election, joining President Grover Cleveland, who served nonconsecutive terms in the 19th century.
Mr. Trump’s restoration came on a sunny but frigid day as temperatures dipped to 26 degrees (and felt like 19 degrees) in a city virtually locked down by security forces. Much of downtown was blocked off by scale-proof fencing, concrete barriers, military vehicles and dump trucks, while the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue was canceled and held at Capital One Arena instead.
Eight years after his first inauguration, Mr. Trump looked a little older but, if possible, even more sure of himself as he takes power with more political wind at his back thanks to a narrow popular vote victory that eluded him last time and a better understanding of how to manipulate the levers of government.
Wearing a dark suit, white shirt, purple tie and U.S. flag pin, Mr. Trump was joined by Melania Trump in a wide-brimmed, black-and-white hat, as well as his five grown children. As he took the oath, Mrs. Trump held two Bibles, one given to him decades ago by his mother and the other used by Abraham Lincoln in 1861, but her husband did not put his hand on them as is traditional.
After Mr. Trump complained, flags at the Capitol and, once power was transferred, at the White House were raised to full staff despite the 30-day mourning period for former President Jimmy Carter. He later signed a proclamation making it mandatory to raise flags on Inauguration Day even if a president had recently died.
The day started with the traditional service at St. John’s Church followed by the coffee at the White House, whereupon Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden rode together in the armored presidential limousine to the Capitol. Asked his message for the day, Mr. Biden said simply, “Joy.” But other Democrats, including the outgoing first lady, Jill Biden, looked less than joyful.
While all three other living presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — showed up for the inauguration as is customary, even though none of them supported Mr. Trump, Michelle Obama refused to attend and none of the other presidents stuck around for the crab-cakes-and-rib-eye-steak congressional luncheon that followed the ceremony.
Likewise in attendance was former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to endorse Mr. Trump last year because of his effort to overturn the 2020 election and became the first vice president not to serve in a president’s subsequent term since 1944. But his wife, Karen Pence, who refused to shake Mr. Trump’s hand at Mr. Carter’s funeral, stayed away.
The Rev. Franklin Graham and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan delivered invocations, Carrie Underwood sang “America the Beautiful,” and several other clergy members from different faiths offered benedictions. Mr. Trump planned to attend three inaugural balls in the evening.
The new power map in Washington was on display during the ceremony and the lunch. Mixed in with the former presidents, family members, prospective cabinet members and congressional leaders were check-writing billionaires like Mr. Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. The chief executive of TikTok had a reserved spot among the few who made it into the Rotunda as well, hours before Mr. Trump temporarily spared the firm from a legal ban. “The Return of the King,” Mr. Musk exulted on social media before generating online outrage over a gesture at a later rally that some compared to a Nazi salute.
Mr. Trump followed most of the conventions of the day. He shook Mr. Biden’s hand after taking the oath and escorted his predecessor and Dr. Biden to a Marine helicopter on the East Front of the Capitol to bid them farewell as they began their journey back to Delaware. Mr. Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, likewise saw off Ms. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, as they headed back to California.
But it did not take long for Mr. Trump to go off script in a rambling, off-the-cuff speech to supporters at the Capitol that lasted longer than his Inaugural Address. Sounding more like a candidate again, he excoriated Mr. Biden, Ms. Cheney and General Milley and said former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “guilty as hell” of not securing the Capitol on Jan. 6. He offered some of his favorite false claims and his greatest hits of grievances about all the ways he feels mistreated.
At yet another speech later in the day to supporters at the arena, he mocked Mr. Biden’s age and called his “one of the worst administrations in history,” while denouncing the investigators and prosecutors who had pursued him as “these creeps,” including the “deranged” special counsel, Jack Smith.
During one of his encounters with supporters, Mr. Trump said that his wife and vice president had urged him to tone down his Inaugural Address, but even the toned-down Trump talk was an aggressive assault against the status quo and everyone he portrayed as a “radical and corrupt establishment.”
Mr. Trump, the first convicted felon ever inaugurated as president, complained about what he called “the vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department” in the first minute of his speech.
He inherited a country that by many normal metrics is in better shape than at any inauguration in a couple of dozen years. Unemployment, inflation and crime are low, jobs and stock markets are up, energy production has hit record highs and no American troops are fighting an active overseas war. But Mr. Trump asserted that “the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair” and portrayed himself as its savior.
“The golden age of America begins right now,” he said, opening the speech. He promised a “revolution of common sense” that will reverse current policies on immigration, the environment and regulation.
Speaking on the holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, he said he would build a “colorblind and merit-based society” while taking a swipe at transgender Americans by saying government policy would hold “that there are only two genders, male and female.”
His speech was at times in conflict with his own record. Mr. Trump, one of the most polarizing figures in modern times, said he would be “a peacemaker and unifier.” He vowed to “stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America” even as he is threatening to sue or take away broadcast licenses from news media organizations. He said government would no longer “persecute political opponents” despite declaring repeatedly for months that his adversaries should be prosecuted.
But he presented himself as a man who had evolved since leaving office four years ago. “I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success,” Mr. Trump said.
“Over the past eight years,” he added, “I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history. And I have learned a lot along the way.”
