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Sticking to the teleprompter, and speaking in a more measured tone than he deploys at his rallies, Donald Trump began his inaugural address by predicting “the golden age of America begins right now” and vowing the US “will flourish and be respected again all over the world”.
But the speech by the 78-year-old, which was the longest by an incoming American president in almost a century, soon veered off into attacks on his predecessor Joe Biden, and threats to undo much of his legacy with a string of executive orders.
Here are some of the key passages:
This was one of several applause lines lifted almost word-for-word from Trump’s first, and famously dark, inaugural address eight years ago.
Trump also renewed his critique of the “establishment”, which he said had “extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair”. Four of the world’s five richest men and several corporate bosses were among the VIPs watching in seats a few feet away.
Although Trump’s rhetoric was not quite as sinister as his 2017 “American carnage” inauguration speech, the president took several opportunities to attack Biden’s record.
“We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad,” he said.
He also criticised “a government that has given unlimited funding to the defence of foreign borders”, in a thinly veiled reference to US aid for Ukraine.
Trump campaigned hard for the White House last year, claiming immigrants coming across the southern border were turning the US into an “occupied country”. He hit the theme again hard in his inauguration speech.
Trump claimed the Biden administration’s immigration policies had provided “sanctuary and protection” for criminals, including “many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world”.
The new president vowed to “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came”. He said he would send troops to the southern border to repel an “invasion”.
Some of Trump’s remarks pointed to specific policies designed to please various factions within his broad coalition.
He earned rapturous applause for saying he would sign executive orders to expand US oil and gas exploration — tapping America’s “liquid gold” — a move he says will slash energy prices and beat back inflation. As he was speaking the White House said he would also pull the US out of the Paris climate pact.
Trump also said he would keep his “sacred pledge to our great American auto workers” by scrapping the electric vehicle mandate — though the US has no law compelling people to buy EVs — and vowed to impose tariffs on other countries “to enrich our citizens”.
The president also endorsed a plan touted by his biggest financial supporter, Elon Musk, to colonise Mars — a mission that the US government had considered a distraction from revisiting the Moon.
Halfway through the speech, Trump reeled off a list of eccentric promises. He said the US would rename the Gulf of Mexico “to the Gulf of America” and restore the name of North America’s highest peak, Alaska’s Denali, to Mount McKinley, in honour of the former president who “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent”.
He said the US would “take back” the Panama Canal, which Washington gave to the central American country in 1978.
“The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated,” Trump said. “American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form,” he added, before falsely claiming — in front of China’s vice-president, who was in attendance — that Beijing was “operating the Panama Canal”.
A sense of messianic destiny and a touch of vindication were prominent features of Trump’s long speech.
“Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and, indeed, to take my life,” Trump said. He referred to the July rally in Pennsylvania when “an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear”. “I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason.”
The first convicted felon to hold the presidency also hit out at the various criminal cases brought against him over the past few years, vowing that “the vicious, violent, and unfair weaponisation of the Justice Department and our government will end”.
While he did not repeat his false claim that he won the 2020 election, Trump said his win in November was “a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal”.
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