Donald Trump Kicks Off Second Term With a Litany of Gripes and Grudges

Any hopes that Donald Trump might find happiness in his presidential victory were dashed Monday morning, when the newly sworn-in president followed up his scripted inauguration speech with a second—and slightly longer—address airing out old grievances and targeting his long-held enemies.

The second speech, made to an overflow room of supporters shut out of the actual inauguration, began with a seeming attempt at appeasement. “I don’t want to have all those big shots up there,” Trump said of the business leaders in attendance, telling the crowd: “You’re more powerful than them, you look better than them, and I love you.” He also heaped praise on his stage-mate, Vice President JD Vance—but acknowledged Vance’s “very tough first week”—and took a shot at Mike Johnson, who Trump noted “got a negative vote a few weeks ago,” in reference to Johnson’s narrow reelection as House speaker.

Finally, Donald Trump proceeded with a well-known rhetorical move: the recitation of a conversation with someone seeking to suppress his ebullience. In this case, it was the tag team of Vance and his own wife Melania Trump, who—still donning that hat—was seated to Trump’s right. “Please sir,” he claimed they said. “It’s such a beautiful, unifying speech. Please don’t say these things.”

Of course, Trump went on to say those very things in a long and rambling address (“the weave” was not in effect). He spoke in defense of “the J6 hostages,” a reference to the violent 2021 insurgence at the Capitol. “You’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages,” he said to applause. He also mentioned the recipients of then-president Joe Biden’s pardons earlier Monday, who Trump characterized as “people guilty of very, very bad crimes,” before meandering into a morass of false claims and misinformation about the violent attack on democracy. In one line of attack, Trump specifically accused his perceived foes of crying, including Liz Cheney (a “crying lunatic”) and Adam Kinzinger (“he’s a super crier”).

Other targets included California, with Trump baselessly claiming that “lost ballots” threw his loss of the state into question. His wounds over 2020 election loss also remain unhealed, as he falsely announced “2020, by the way, that election was totally rigged.” Trump went even as far back as 2016, saying that Hillary Clinton, his then presidential opponent, “didn’t look too happy today.” And while we’re on the topic of people who looked unhappy today, Trump circled back to Melania for a little more mockery. “I shouldn’t say this. I’m going to get hell when I say this, but her feet are absolutely aching,” the president said, before addressing her headwear. “With the hat that she’s wearing, she almost blew away,” Trump said. “We almost lost her. She was being elevated off the ground. She almost blew away.”

Trump capped off by claiming “this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” a reminder that the president far prefers these unwritten verbal jam sessions to the rare times he delivers prepared remarks. As he embarks on a second term in which inner-circle pushback seems far less likely, it’s safe to assume that Trump’s freewheeling rhetoric style will be the rule, not the exception.

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