This is Donald Trump’s world now and we’re just living in it. The inauguration of the 47th President took place in the Capitol rotunda where Trump’s own marble statue will surely join those of other American legends one day.
“Oh America!” the opera tenor Christopher Macchio sang, in front of vast paintings depicting the American Revolution and British surrender.
Oh America, indeed! Trump has brought back the concept of Manifest Destiny. “The Golden Age of America begins right now,” he said. “America will soon be greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before.” Presenting himself as a master builder, his ambition extends to the stars. He promised to launch astronauts to “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars”.
The speech had a messianic flavour after Trump’s account of his near-fatal encounter with an assassin’s bullet. Declaring 20 January 2025 “Liberation Day”, he said, “My life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God.”
Gone was the pessimistic view of the US presented in his “American Carnage” 2016 inauguration speech. Trump presented himself as living proof of the American dream, that no ambition was too small, no goal too big, and that “sunlight” was pouring in “all over the entire world’.
At the Capitol, the new US establishment was on display: first and foremost, the Trump family in all its pomp and style, including the unmissable, 6ft 9in Barron, 18, debuting a new slicked-back hairstyle. Melania was as poised and inscrutable as ever, with a navy blue hat pulled low over her eyes.
Oligarchs are capitulating, but Americans are deeply divided on Trump
Read MoreTo Trump’s right, as he took the oath of office, were the tech titans, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai. To his left were the old guard, looking like relics of a lost time: the Clintons, the Bushes, the Bidens and vanquished vice-president Kamala Harris.
Barack Obama and Mike Pence were flying solo. Their wives were apparently unwilling to pretend they were happy to see Trump return to the scene of the 6 January, 2021, riot.
But all that was pushed aside at the Capitol, as Trump talked of himself as a “peacemaker and unifier”. Thanking African-American and Hispanic voters for their support, he said, “We will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit-based.”
Trump looked ahead to his plans to clear away DEI initiatives, reassert gender definitions of male and female, fix the immigration crisis and “drill, baby, drill”.
Governing is harder than speech-making or signing hundreds of executive orders. But there is no denying the scale of Trump’s ambition. He believes that he has returned to power to Make America Great Again.
Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Centre for International Reporting
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