AFP via Getty Images
Here’s hoping we can all live up to President Trump’s second Inaugural Address.
It was a grand speech — optimistic, ambitious, unifying, elevating.
A stark contrast not just to President Joe Biden’s 2021 address, which talked a lot about unity without doing much to unify, but also to Trump’s 2017 “American Carnage” speech, which seemed directed at a Mad Max nation and world.
“The golden age of America begins right now,” the president vowed.
“From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.”
Perhaps his grandest note came near the end, looking backward to look forward:
“There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls.
“Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness.
“They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens, and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.
Trump’s inaugural address at a glance
National emergency at the southern border
All illegal entry will be immediately halted. Millions and millions to be deported. Reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy. End Catch and Release. Send troops to the border. Designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Defeat inflation, rapidly bring down costs and prices
Declare a national energy emergency
“We will drill baby, drill!”
America will be a manufacturing nation again
“We have the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth and we are going to use it.”
Establish the External Revenue Service
“We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
Establish the Department of Government Efficiency
Immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America
Bring Law and Order back to our cities
End government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into daily life. Forge a society that is colorblind and merit based.
Reinstate service members who were ejected for refusing the COVID vaccine, with full back pay
Rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Restore the name of Mount McKinley.
Take back the Panama Canal
Plant the Stars and Stripes on planet Mars
Revoke the electric vehicle mandate
“If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.”
He cited his own political recovery “as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do. In America, the impossible is what we do best.”
Yet this followed all manner of other unifying notes, not least: “Today is Martin Luther King Day and . . . in his honor we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.”
His speech should not only ring in the ears of the American people, who suffered for four years under the yolk of misplaced shame about this great nation but also to other Western democracies who have all but forgotten — and are in fact apologetic — about ambition, the pursuit of excellence and meritocracy for all.
It’s a lot for the nation to live up to — and for Trump himself.
In his remarks right afterward to supporters who couldn’t make it into the room, the new president admitted he’d had to resist the temptation to address Biden’s final outrageous pardons and other last-minute sabotage.
And no one could begrudge him some well-chosen words to those who ranged the entire establishment against him in many unjust and mendacious ways, eroding the trust in our institutions as they went.
But honoring the promises he made to start his presidency will require Trump to avoid getting trapped in divisiveness.
He won. The American people saw through that, and he should resolve to move on and not fall for his enemies’ bait.
Instead, he should continue to forge ahead with steel-eyed focus, and clean up the mess Biden has left in the government, the country, and abroad.
He should look to the legacy he will leave, not prosecute the past.
We think he knows that, having learned from his first term, his time in exile and working his way back — and from the near-death experience in that Pennsylvania field.
Trump 47 promises to be a more statesmanlike president, and he’s got a far stronger team beside him now to handle the necessary combat.
We hope he can join the nation in uniting behind his inspiring vision.