By Kenneth Tiven
The optics of the presidential front row explain this: oligarchs whose businesses employ thousands of guest workers, especially in technology positions, were front and centre. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, billionaire head of Google, and their wives or girlfriends, Add Tim Cook, Sam Altman and Sergey Brin. Sitting behind them were the cabinet nominees. In an overflow room were Congressional members, equivalent to cheap seats at a sporting event. At less than 2,000 people, including security, Trump can now claim the smallest inauguration crowd on record. It was moved indoors ostensibly because it was too cold outside for people. The previous 57 inaugurations have been outdoors regardless of the weather, leading to only one sick and then dead president in 1841. The Capitol flag was at half mast to honour President Carter’s passing. Trump had demanded it be raised, but this proved impossible because the ropes were frozen to the pole. Did Trump’s hardcore evangelical Christian MAGA followers notice he did not put a hand on the Bible while taking the oath of office? Trump has never claimed to be especially religious in thought or behaviour.
The rhetoric did not deliver his promise to begin his second term in a spirit of unity. He lied, which is as natural as breathing for the first convicted felon ever elected to lead the nation. He claimed his victory was a “mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place.”
Eloquence or an uplifting moment weren’t there. The Associated Press, the national news agency, reported nothing in a 1,500 word story that was optimistic about a future America. The Reverend Franklin Graham’s benediction set the mood in describing Trump’s persecution by unnamed evil forces of “enemies” and the “darkness” of the last four years. The felony convictions and sizable financial penalties in civil lawsuits are unlikely to ever be publicly mentioned by Trump or in his presence. The humiliation of being convicted in courtrooms for a good part of 2024 remains fresh in his mind.
“American Carnage” was his 2016 inaugural speech theme. Now, eight years later, at age 78, he remains more gloomy and angry. “The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you. Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and, indeed, to take my life,” he said. Basically the speech was a rehash of campaign rally remarks. His speech writers laboured for eloquence, but it was delivered in a monotone recitation from the teleprompter screen.
Trump’s consistent defense mechanism is to never admit he was wrong or mistaken. His most fervent MAGA fans admire that trait. Policy issues play second fiddle. An acquaintance who votes Republican summed it up: “Finally, an America First President and administration! As Donald Trump, Jr. noted when asked about the change from the first Trump administration: “This time we know what we’re doing.”
The president’s first day was a show of force with pardons and all sorts of Executive Orders (EOs), but not at the Rotunda’s formal swearing-in ceremony. This was saved for a nearby arena where around 20,000 of the faithful had gathered. They cheered when he announced sweeping pardons for nearly all 1,600 people convicted for beating up police officers, trashing the building, and threatening to hang then Vice-President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. Louder cheers greeted his commuting the sentences of the 14 persons serving long terms for seditious conspiracy. How all of these people behave now in the free world will be an interesting issue.
The pardons did not sit well with Harry Litman, a lawyer and former senior official at the Department of Justice. He wrote: “The pardons are vile, vicious, and despicable. They are the most flagrant show of disrespect and tyranny towards the country by any president in our history. If they are not strongly repudiated by history, it will mean that the country has been lost”. His outrage included, “Trump’s blizzard of executive orders in his first hours as president includes a dozen or more dangerous edicts that bring us closer to an authoritarian state. Driven by lies, propaganda, and pro-billionaire policies, they will come under heavy fire in the courts… His brazen moves to manufacture an emergency to justify draconian immigration measures, ignore Congress’ command with respect to TikTok, and overturn the clear constitutional command of birthright citizenship, among others, are a tsunami of outrages by a madman.”
As a footnote, the grounds outside the arena were littered, as security refused entry to anyone with food, drink or packages of any sort.
Four years ago, most of the Republicans in congress were afraid for their lives from the insurrectionists. In the face of a well-orchestrated campaign claiming election theft, they mellowed. Today they are willing to confirm cabinet officers with razor thin resumes rather than risk an angry president telling his MAGA voters to get even on a political level. For contrast, a reputable poll conducted in late November found that only 30 percent of Americans supported pardoning the January 6 protesters. In early January, many Republican lawmakers suggested they would not support pardons for those who committed violence against police officers. On January 12, 2025, then vice-president-elect JD Vance told Fox News that, “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” That must be his Yale law degree speaking.
Trump’s speeches treat MAGA supporters and Republican politicians as if they were at a tribute concert for musical hits of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Listening and applauding is the only option, He described his work against “a radical and corrupt establishment” that had left the US “broken and seemingly in complete disrepair,” which is not the situation at all. He did not take personal credit for surviving an assassination, giving credit to God so he, Trump, could bring about “the four greatest years in American history.” Political writer Lucian Truscott described the speech as “the empty chest-beating threats, the insane repetition of ‘as never before’ braggadocio, a pandemic of pandering and self-promotion.”
EOs are a performance by the Project 2025 lawyers to satisfy some MAGA shibboleths. Lawyers fling suit against them say they are badly written and unclear.
An EO seeks to undermine the post-Civil War 14th Constitutional amendment’s grant of birthright citizenship. It directs US government agencies to no longer issue citizenship documentation to babies born in USA to parents who lack legal status. A coalition of 18 mostly states that didn’t support Trump, claim this order violates the constitutional rights of thousands of children and imposes undue costs on local jurisdictions that would lose federal funding tied to Medicaid and children’s health insurance. EOs will keep an army of law firms and courts busy for the next four years. An EO would require the government to recognize only two genders. For non-binary people, this raises real issues, especially for the issuance of identity documents at the state and federal levels.
The 19th century idea of an ever expanding USA dominates Trump’s understanding of why Thomas Jefferson initiated the Louisiana purchase in 1803 which doubled the physical size of the USA? Similarly, he believes Panama should give back the canal we bribed them to let us build after a French effort failed.
Trump’s start in real estate as a young man clearly impacts everything. Taught by his father to build and buy cheaply, claim quality, and sell high, that has been his modus operandi despite six bankruptcies. To avoid the same ending with the USA, he wants to raise the debt limit on government borrowing and simultaneously cut federal spending on programmes like Social Security and Medicare that help millions of ordinary people.
Antics go too far for Elon Musk who appears to play the role of prime minister to Trump if the US used an Indian-style parliamentary system. At the arena after the formal inauguration ceremony, he spoke and then gave what was easily interpreted as a Nazi straight-arm salute, not once, but twice. His support for right-wing governments in Europe has been crystal clear. Our parents’ generation fought against the Nazis. Now we have someone who was grinning and clapping during an inaugural address, giving the Nazi salute, at an event for the new leader.
“A new golden age of America,” Trump said, invoking an image of his often tasteless use of gold leaf and paint, and in Trump Tower in New York City, you can’t take the real estate salesman out of Donald—it is always superlatives, and often the likelihood of bankruptcy, either moral or financial, or both.
One anguished woman wrote on bluesky.com that “Tears and primal screams of disbelief, anger, and fear flowed freely on November 5, 2024; the day democracy died after a 250 year run,” She contrasted this with Obama’s first inauguration when he took the oath of office as “there wasn’t a dry eye among a group of friends who had gathered around a TV; a release of emotional joy, relief pride, and optimism.”
The H1-B visa changes: Chilling implication
Trump’s Executive Order on birthright citizenship tests the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution that says: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State where in they reside. Trump’s Executive Order claims that visa holders are not subject to US jurisdiction, and therefore, children born in the US are not citizens. It doesn’t revoke anyone’s citizenship. It applies only to future kids. Trump’s executive order’s interpretation theory was rejected in 1898 by SCOTUS, so this Executive Order is likely be struck down. Lawsuits are making the point that if green card holders are subject to US jurisdiction, all visa forms are.
The chilling implication is that one of the attractions for skilled people taking these positions is the opportunity to have a child who is a dual citizen. This is long term compared to the differential in dollar-rupee payrolls. His oligarch friends have no doubt made it clear that there is a national security advantage to having these skills in USA.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels