Don’t miss our exclusive preshow featuring Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boreing. Witness Vice President-elect JD Vance and our 47th President, Donald Trump, take the oath of office and be sworn in. Plus, stay tuned for live reports from The Daily Wire crew across the Capitol and Washington, D.C. Watch now!
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Welcome back to Daily Wire's special inaugural coverage.
We're approximately 30 minutes away from the beginning of the inauguration ceremony.
And right behind us, President Trump's motorcade is arriving here at the Capitol building where he'll be taking the oath of office.
It's been a really chaotic last couple of days of trying to understand exactly what was happening with all of the location changes based on weather and perhaps rumors are security threats to the inauguration.
But at this very moment, President Trump and I am turning around to look.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Hey, there he is.
There he is.
President Trump rolling up right behind us to the U.S. Capitol, where he'll be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States in only the second non-consecutive second term in the history of the country.
I'm Jeremy Boring.
I'm joined today by Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles.
We're the hosts of all the Daily Wire shows.
Well, that's not even true anymore.
There's so many Daily Wire shows, you can't really shake a stick at them.
But we are the hosts of Backstage.
That's right.
Makes us feel like a couple of real cool guys.
And here we are on a very cold 22-degree day in Washington, D.C., celebrating Donald Trump's historic inauguration as the 47th president of the United States.
The winning is just starting.
If you're watching us now, we appreciate it.
If you're not at Daily Wire Plus, head over there for your best coverage.
You get 47% off using code 47. Plus, you'll get a free $20 gift as our thank you.
Guys, what a day.
Truly the end, I think, of the Obama era.
You know, there was the possibility that that could have been true in 2016. It ended up not being true.
Obama was able to really surge back and in many ways be the most influential figure in Washington, D.C. these last four years.
Today, I feel that his era has completely vanquished.
Donald Trump coming in in a unique position for a second term where he actually has a popular mandate, where he's had four years in sort of the political wilderness to learn from both the successes and failures of his first administration, and to face this unrelenting lawfare from the left, which really, I think, exposed what the left's true intentions are, which really, I think, exposed what the left's true intentions are, not only for him, but for the And he comes in an energized second-term president.
I actually would go even further.
I agree with all of that.
I think Obama is cooked.
But furthermore, I think the libs are more over right now than they have been in my entire life.
Oscar de la Renta.
Bragging about making a dress for the second lady Usha Vance.
That's right.
You've got Snoop Dogg playing an inauguration party for Donald Trump.
You've got Bill Gates sucking up to Trump, calling him an intriguing, fascinating man.
All of the corporate executives, the big tech, of course, Mark Zuckerberg.
And then, of course, the foreign dignitaries coming into the imperial capital for a shift, not just in a political party, but also, I think, a global shift toward the right.
That's what we're seeing.
There's also what we're not seeing that I think is really interesting, to your point about the Libs being over, is we've been here in D.C. for a few days now.
I'm told there was another Women's March protest.
I saw no...
A People's March.
Yeah, a People's March.
I saw no indication of it.
So what we're not seeing is what I think a lot of us expected, which was this like...
This explosive nuclear outrage from the left, this huge meltdown.
And instead, you get maybe a few thousand people walking around.
And so it seems like on the left, there's this kind of resignation to the fact that Trump is here.
And I think he's a normal part of the political landscape now.
So leftists are having a problem casting him as this sort of abnormal aberration, this dangerous figure.
And so even on the left, there seems to be kind of this resignation, this shrug of, well, this is how it is now.
I want to give a big thank you to Joe Biden.
Really thank you to Joe Biden, because this last four years has been total s***.
But, you know, aside from that, there would be no Trump 2. Except for Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was a historically bad president.
He's going to go down in history as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States.
In the modern history of the United States, it's a running gun battle between him and Jimmy Carter.
So we can easily say that he's now the worst living president of the United States.
And I think that without him, none of this would have been possible.
So we owe a big thank you to President Biden.
Biden.
With that, and I'm glad that we'll never have to say that again because he's not going to be president again.
So that's going to be great.
But I think that there's really three things that I've been thinking about today.
One is the uniqueness of President Trump as a human and as a figure.
It's just unbelievable.
Like, you get used to this stuff covering it every day.
We cover it every day.
Trump, as you say, has become part of the normal political landscape.
And then you see the image of President Trump coming out of the White House and getting into the motorcade to go to take the inaugural oath at the Capitol building behind us.
And you think to yourself...
Man, this is unbelievable.
The writing here is just insane.
You have a person who came from literally nowhere in politics, like had never held office, to become president of the United States.
He loses an election to Joe Biden in the most contentious election of our lifetime, without a doubt, between BLM, riots, and COVID, and changing the rules, and the insanity that followed.
And then he comes all the way back to the presidency of the United States as a singular figure.
There's nothing remotely like it in our lifetime.
And then you think about the American people, and what the American people...
Have said here is that they are tired of the fake normality provided by the Democratic Party.
We kept hearing all the...
The pitch was always Donald Trump is not normal.
He's not a normal guy.
He's super not...
This is not normal.
You kept hearing that during term one.
And then you got Joe Biden, who's supposedly the most normal guy.
He's so normal.
He's got a normal politician who's super normal.
And it turns out everything he did was not normal.
Everything.
His presidency was a sham because he wasn't even alive.
His executive orders vastly exceeded the scope of his office.
The policies that he pursued were disastrous for the United States, both at home and abroad.
In his waning hours, he pardoned a bunch of people with blanket pardons that he couldn't, it's nothing we've ever done.
For crimes they are not accused of.
He tried to add a constitutional amendment 72 hours ago by presidential fiat.
And then they say that he's Captain Normalcy.
The American people say, you know what?
We're tired of the illusion of normal.
We just want normal.
So President Trump is supposed to, in his speech today, talk about the power of common sense.
This is supposed to be the theme of his speech.
It's going to be a common sense.
That's all we're asking for.
That's all we're asking for.
Even, like, I'm a conservative.
I wish you were more conservative.
He isn't.
He's commonsensical and utilitarian.
And guess what?
That's what the American people want.
They want common sense, utilitarian, pragmatist, winning first president.
You know, the one thing we haven't mentioned here is us, the media.
The fact that the left-wing media that enforced all these illusions on the American people threatened them essentially with any violation of their beliefs.
They've been particleized.
They're going through the seven stages of grief, which are whining, anger, denial, denial, denial, denial.
They just absolutely cannot get around the fact that they don't matter anymore.
And we do.
And we do for a reason.
Not because we have the reporting power they have.
We don't.
Not yet.
But we do have the power to debunk the lies that they tell.
And we've done it bit by bit, piece by piece, skirmish by skirmish.
And we beat them.
We beat them down to the ground.
I wish you guys could see immediately behind us the angles a bit steep, but the presidential motorcade only just ending, a motorcade which began before we even went live.
Certainly the longest motorcade I've ever seen as President Trump is arriving at the Capitol, and I believe from...
It's a little sunny out here.
We can't see everything as clearly as we'd like in the confidence monitors, but I believe we also saw President Biden leaving the White House to make his journey over to the United States Capitol for the inauguration of Donald Trump.
We're going to tell you more about that right after a quick word from our sponsor, Oracle.
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Michael, you're in many ways the most Trumpy of the Daily Wire hosts.
You're often accused of being sycophantish by me.
I do have to say, you've been the most bullish on President Trump's chances all the way back to 2020 that he would come back, that he would be elected president again.
It's a vindicating moment for you, I'm sorry to say, but happy for the country.
You make a great point.
I do seem very right and handsome and lively and exuberant.
There's a lot to what Ben just said.
This is a point I have been hammering since before the election, and I'm glad to see after the election, which is, to me, the phrase of 2024 and the phrase of this administration has to be common sense.
Ben, when you say you wish Trump were more conservative, you're speaking in a political, ideological way.
Now, there is a kind of deep conservatism even to the notion of common sense, but there are a lot of people who voted for Trump, who did not ever vote before, We also want to apply reason to our political intuitions.
But I'm all for that.
You know, I think back to the worst leftist revolutionaries ever.
One guy in particular, Antonio Gramsci, who observed...
That a revolution can only succeed if it holds the common sense.
And the left totally kissed that away.
And if Trump can make his remarks today and the theme of his admin, that we're going to be normal.
It's okay to be normal, guys.
We're going to use common sense.
We're going to defer to the wisdom of our ancestors and the things that have just kind of worked out before.
If he can do that, he is going to hold not only the center-right, he's going to hold the center, the center-left.
I think he could even expand that new coalition.
You saw the executive orders.
I mean, he's supposed to issue some 200 executive orders today.
Now, listen, as a fan of constitutional government, not a fan of that many executive orders.
But that is a perfect response to what the Democrats have done in centralizing executive power since the Obama days.
It was Barack Obama who, after he lost Congress, said he would rule by pen and phone.
And then it was Donald Trump who tried to reverse many of those things.
And then it was Joe Biden who expanded it radically.
Joe Biden issued more executive orders while he was president than any president of our lifetime for his four years.
And now Donald Trump has to reverse all that stuff.
And so his executive orders right now are very commonsensical things.
It's put Remain in Mexico back in place.
From now on, men pretending to be women are not going to be treated as women.
They're going to be treated as men.
This is literally one of the...
It's amazing that that has to be an executive order.
That phraseology is the exact phraseology of the executive order.
It says, men pretending to be women.
That's his exact phraseology.
That is a wild difference from the kind of pseudo-respect that's been granted to this stupid proposition for the last several years that Matt, of course, has been fighting against so prominently.
The fact that these sorts of things were up for debate, and the fact that these are quick and easy wins for Trump.
Now, the thing, if I want to speak pragmatically about Trump for a second, the big risk, I think, for Trump is that President Trump wants wins.
He likes headlines and he likes wins.
The one cautionary note is don't go for the quick and easy win over the long-lasting systemic change.
Because I think that there are going to be a lot of shiny objects where you can grab the win right in the moment.
But the big thing that he was elected to do was, for example, clean out the deadwood of government.
It's not just to issue an executive order and declare the thing over.
I think that President Trump knows that.
I think his cabinet knows that.
But I think that's also going to require the support of the American people, understanding things take time.
He also has a majority in both houses of Congress and ostensibly a majority on the Supreme Court.
They should be able to come back behind these executive orders and codify a lot of them in actual law.
And if they don't do that...
I'm worried that Congress has actually become a vestigial organ that is incapable of passing legislation.
He's also shown that he's learned something.
I mean, he staffed his administration this time.
He didn't staff it at all last time and essentially allowed the Republican Party to staff it with people who hated him.
Now he's got people who love him, and I think that that's an important thing.
They keep saying he appoints loyalists.
I think, what are you going to do?
Appoint enemies?
Guys in your administration are going to do what you tell them to do, and he's sending a lot of sticks of dynamite into these departments, which is exactly what they need.
Especially in the legal departments, especially the FBI, the DOJ, has to be cleaned out.
This reign of terror.
And it has been a reign of terror.
I mean, let's face it.
You know, it's one thing for the media that is protected by the First Amendment.
But people were being raided in their homes for protesting abortion, punished for going to the Latin mass.
I mean, if it were only Knowles, I would say fine.
But, you know, other people...
You would enforce it yourself, actually.
I would actually go in and investigate you myself.
But, no, this is an amazing...
has been an amazingly oppressive regime.
And the idea that Trump is abnormal...
This is the most interesting thing about the last 20 years of American government, is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden both present as moderate, which obscures their radicalism.
They're two of the most radical men ever to hold the office of the President of the United States.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, presents as a radical.
It's pretty moderate.
And yet he's pretty moderate.
Because it takes a crazy, and this is the thing I've been saying about him from the beginning, it took a crazy man to break this glass, to break this incredible shield of dreams that's been put over the American public where they couldn't see what was happening.
And there's also, we're talking about the political side of it.
I mean...
In the culture, there's a real massive shift that's happening right now, and it feels, it's probably not as sudden as it feels, but it feels very sudden.
And so, for example, that executive voter with that language on the trans issue is really significant.
There's also, I mean, the Daily Wire just reported today, the latest poll, I think it was from New York Times, on the trans issue, it's something like 80% now, majority of both Democrats and Republicans saying things like, we don't want men and women's sports and that sort of thing, a majority against, you know, transing the kids.
And if you go back and look at the polls five years ago, it wasn't like that.
I will say, our company should take credit for this.
Donald Trump, in 2016, when he was running, said Caitlyn Jenner could use the women's restrooms.
He did.
I mean, and the reality is that it was the outside voices in the conservative movement that held the line on this.
And we were leading the charge on this.
Everything from Matt doing his unbelievable work on this issue to the rest of us covering this stuff.
I mean, I remember being threatened on national TV by Zoe Torrin in 2014. We've been fighting this battle for a very, very long time.
It creates a problem for the left.
Here's the problem the left has right now.
I think they have a few problems.
One is that they run on emotions, and emotions can't be sustained forever.
And so I think people are just sort of exhausted.
But then the other thing, too, is what are they about?
Like, what is the Democrat Party about right now?
What's their agenda?
What's their project?
The good thing about Trump is he's always been able to speak very clearly and simply about what he wants to do, build the wall, you know, secure the border.
These are simple things.
Right now, I think you look at the Democrat Party, you were to get 100 Democrats in a room and say, what is your party about?
What do you guys stand for?
I think you'd get 90 different answers.
Well, that's why I think they're freaking out right now, because what they were about was being against Trump.
Yeah.
Okay, that's really what they were about.
I mean, since Trump won, every single waking moment for the Democrats has been, we oppose Donald Trump and everything he stands for, and we're going to blame his victory on the Russians or on Facebook or on some sort of corruption.
And then it turns out the American people threw up a giant orange middle finger a second time and said no to that.
So what exactly do you do when your entire case is we just don't like the guy the American people selected?
There's nothing left.
Who is their leader?
You know, I like that Trump has changed the Republican Party, but even if Republicans hate Trump...
At least it's clear who runs the Republican Party.
It's Donald Trump.
Previously...
Three months ago, you would say, well, probably Barack Obama runs the Democrat Party.
I think he's basically out.
Joe Biden certainly isn't running anything.
He's probably not running his toothbrush in his mouth.
Kamala Harris isn't.
So who is the figure?
Who's the figure in media?
Who's the figure?
They just don't have one.
So they're obviously confused, which is why I'm so excited about the executive actions today.
Fifty expected executive orders and then additional executive actions once he's sworn in.
The thing I love most about it is not just what it's going to do.
He's inviting certain legal challenges, potentially on birthright citizenship, not just the gender stuff.
It's that he is going in, guns ablazing.
He is organized.
To your point, Drew, he just outsourced hiring to the GOP in 2016. But one of the big problems was...
He couldn't get people to work for him because the brand had been made so toxic by the dishonest media.
That's a huge shift now, too.
The fact that Bill Gates is saying, wow, what a fascinating guy.
Oh, how intriguing.
We're going to work together.
If Bill Gates is going to work, if Mark Zuckerberg is going to work for Trump, then everybody is going to work with him.
And so he's going to be able to staff really, really good people.
We're approximately 12 and a half minutes out from the beginning of the inaugural ceremony inside the Capitol Rotunda.
You're starting to see a lot of familiar faces.
I see Charlie Kirk.
In the room right now, several prominent lawmakers.
Vivek, Elon Musk already have walked through.
A pretty remarkable moment in that this is taking place inside the rotunda of the Capitol.
Normally, you would see it happening directly behind us on the National Mall on the steps of the Capitol.
That's where these events are typically held.
It's obviously why we selected this location.
But there have been enormous changes and frequent changes and rumors of even more changes over the last 48 hours.
As the government has responded both to the incredibly cold weather here in Washington, D.C., and we are told security threats against the president, I've given some thought to it.
My guess is that the kind of drone warfare that we've seen taking place, like the individualized drone warfare we've seen taking place in Eastern Europe, probably presents challenges that we just don't know how to keep an event like this safe in the way that historically we've been able to.
Whatever the case, it's only the second time in our lifetimes that a president has been sworn in in the rotunda of the Capitol, You know, maybe it's actually
okay.
Like, he's so bad.
Then maybe we should actually consider this.
And then the attempted assassination of Trump, when you saw people suddenly come out of the woodwork, Mark Zuckerberg was saying, that was pretty awesome how Trump responded to that.
Suddenly there was a cultural pane of glass that had been broken, and you can't unbreak the glass.
Once you say the guy might be cool, he might be doing something important and useful and amazing, once you say that, you can't unsay it, right?
If you put somebody in the untouchable box, once they're out of the untouchable box...
You can't stuff him back in.
And I think that that was one of the big problems that Kamala had.
She kept trying to stuff Trump back in the box that had already been destroyed by the debate with Biden.
So Joe Biden did more damage to the Democratic brand in the last year.
Like, listen, I think Kamala Harris would have lost him anyway because she's a uniquely terrible candidate.
And that goes back to the sort of modern media sensibility that you're talking about, Drew, which is without the podcast, without the videos, without the ability to expose people in long form, the media would have been able to cram her down our throats.
20 years ago, she's the president of the United States because the media is able to hide her behind glass and then just pretend away all of her problems.
In this election cycle, you've got long form interviews with her that don't exist.
And then you have long form interviews with Trump or JD who are acting like normal humans.
And that's a completely different thing.
So the cultural willingness to now say the thing...
Joe Biden is responsible for that.
So once again, I want to thank the outgoing president of the United States, who's awful.
Who's awful and deserves all the ignominy we can ladle upon him for the rest of his life.
You know, we should talk a little bit more about that assassination attempt because I keep going back to this moment when Trump had COVID and he came back and he said, don't be afraid of it.
Don't let it dominate your life.
And Jake Tapper went on and said, no, you know, it's right to be afraid.
It does dominate your life.
You should be afraid.
And I thought, that's what they're selling us.
And when you saw Trump...
Stand up after being shot and say fight, fight, fight.
I think a lot of Americans may have said, oh yeah, oh yeah, that's who we're supposed to be.
Well, I mean, also, I think we're all religious people at the table.
If you saw that and you didn't see the hand of God almost literally come down and grab Donald Trump by the head and move his head this much to not have his...
Head blown completely off on national TV. Like, if that moment your confidence didn't skyrocket that this dude was going to be president of the United States again, I gotta say, only secular people probably saw that and were like, well, he probably just has a good shot of not winning.
A priest friend of mine says, it's a wicked generation that seeks after signs and wonders, but it's a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders.
When Mark Zuckerberg wakes up the next day and says, I think he's going to be president.
No, that was because he repealed Rory away.
I'm absolutely convinced.
Okay, you're going all the way.
No, I think that was absolutely, all right, second chance.
I mean, speaking of second chances, I will say that it is rare, and I think this is the rare moment, and this is why...
I think that we should approach this with a lot of excitement and encouragement, but also some trepidation, because God doesn't give countries second chances very often.
Oh, that's right.
And this is a second chance for the country.
If you had told me four years ago that Donald Trump would re-enter office with a Republican majority in the House, in the Senate, and with sometimes six votes on the Supreme Court...
I would have said, you're out of your mind.
That's crazy what you're saying to me right now, given this sort of political situation in the United States four years ago.
And the fact that God has given this opportunity, the American people have taken the opportunity to do this, it means that you can't blow the opportunity.
You cannot.
You cannot be distracted by the dumb kind of stuff that sometimes we get distracted by in political, like the meme coins or the TikToks.
Just do the thing.
Do the thing.
That's the opportunity.
Grab the thing.
Do the thing.
And the American people are going to be grateful for it.
All they want is some sense of solidity in an ever more chaotic world.
And God giving us the second chance.
If it's not seized, I don't think God takes kindly to people who don't take their second chance.
I think also on the right we have this responsibility to keep our fringes out of the center.
The Jew haters and the women haters and the black haters.
I think we've just got to say no.
I know there's going to be moments when they get the clicks, when they get the attention.
We've got to just turn our backs on them.
Because our party has always been the party.
Of liberty and justice for all.
It should remain that way.
We don't need to hate anybody.
We can actually do everything we need to do without letting those people in.
And something that's very encouraging is, if people spend too much time on Twitter, one will think that the country is in a rather bad place.
Good point.
But, you know, you look at Trump himself.
He does not really entertain fringes, hateful people, anything like that.
Trump, as we've been saying now for 20 minutes, Trump really has grabbed the normal.
Trump, he's kind of like the normie president.
I actually think this is a terrible, the ascension of Donald Trump is a terrible defeat for the sort of pseudo-fascist voices on the far right, the anti-Semitic and racist voices on the far right.
They've had a lot of prominence online in the last four years because opposition fuels things like that.
When you see the left ascendant, it creates this reaction, and it creates support for a reaction.
Especially when they're silencing people.
That's right.
It's very hard to have a far-right extremist protest against an ascendant and productive and effective right-wing government.
Back in the rotunda right now, it looks like people are starting to take their seats.
We see Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, I saw Apple CEO Tim Cook, it looks like, has taken a seat as we're about six minutes away from the beginning of the inauguration of Donald Trump.
They'll run late.
My prediction.
This thing ain't starting in six minutes.
Listen, I spent good money on this countdown clock that's playing.
I expect a timely inauguration.
And I have to say, this green screen of the Capitol looks really realistic.
And this green screen is also freezing cold.
It's amazing.
One of the things that is amazing is...
We are literally counting down the moments until Joe Biden leaves.
I can't get over how bad a president he was.
Do you like Joe Biden?
Really, it's an amazing thing to have lived through a historically bad president.
Like a truly historically bad presidency.
Two of them.
Barack Obama was truly historically bad, but in a different and more insidious way.
On purpose.
On purpose, right.
There were rumors yesterday that leading up to this inauguration, Joe Biden was at the very last minute going to cram through a series of UN resolutions.
Targeting Israel.
This was the rumor.
There was a security council meeting that was happening this morning, and that was the going rumor.
And it was like, that might happen.
That's plausible.
He tried to actually add a constitutional amendment by fiat on Twitter.
In a statement he clearly did not write.
I love that, though.
Do you know why I love that?
The reason I loved him trying to ram through the ERA, which had a deadline of, what, 1977?
Then it was like 1982. I mean, they blew past it 40 years ago.
It was 1979. It was more recent than that.
It was more recent.
And they did extend it till 82, but they didn't extend it till 2022.
So when the archivist of the United States said, hey, you can't just declare constitutional amendments into existence, Biden kept moving anyway.
But it wasn't just Biden.
It was Kamala Harris.
It was Tammy Duckworth.
You could tell it was an organized Democrat strategy to just Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton.
Deny till you die.
You know, just say that this is the case.
Why were they doing it?
Yeah.
Because they had nothing else that actually happened to point to as an accomplishment.
And they still think the media exists to cover it up for them.
I think they also have to reanimate.
Their going argument since 2012 has been the war on women, right?
I mean, that was the animating argument in 2012 against Romney.
And it was an idiotic argument in the first place.
But this has been their animating argument.
They tried it with the trans issue.
They tried to pretend that somehow the trans issue was a war on women when, in fact, it was a defense of women.
And then, after the repeal of Roe v.
Wade, they decided that the overturning, They decided that that was going to be the big winner issue for them.
And it turns out the American people kind of normalized on that, meaning that if you're in California, you realize California made your abortion policy.
And if you're in Florida, then you realize Florida made your abortion policy.
And I think Trump, again, this is one of those areas where being a conservative is different than being a pragmatic politician.
I wish that he were more pro-life on a federal level.
And also, if you're a pragmatic politician, what he did by taking that off the table as an issue in the campaign was actually quite important.
So it's easy to forget, to that point, that it was, you know...
Eight months ago, you had the idea, the popular wisdom, was that because of Roe v.
Wade, in fact, conservatives would be in the position that the left is in right now.
Total disarray, relegated to irrelevance.
That was an argument not just among liberals, but there are many people on the right.
Who were panicking over the fact that Roe v.
Wade had been passed and saw it as a net negative.
And look how that turned out.
I agree.
And so I think that because of that, because they blew through the trans issue, that's gone.
The abortion issue is normalizing.
But the only constituency that Democrats do really, really well with now is young single women.
That is the only constituency that they have.
But don't forget, Trump won...
Try the ERA. Why the hell not, right?
I mean, like...
Donald Trump won 40% of women under the age of 30, according to the Associated Press.
So even the most pro-Democrat group...
Ah, but I said young single women, right?
Okay, so the reality is a percentage of people under 30 are married.
That's true.
Even in our day and age, there are still a number of married people.
That's true.
That's a good point.
So, yeah, I think that as Democrats double down on that, the big question for them is what's going to be the next consolidating issue?
And we haven't seen it yet.
This is why...
Again, one of my fears is, and I think the most important thing is continued economic boom.
That is the most important thing because the only thing Democrats can consolidate around is some sort of economic downturn.
They can't consolidate around social policy, they lose.
They can't consolidate around foreign policy because their foreign policy is a complete mess and they don't even know what they believe.
So the only thing that they can consolidate around is if there were to be some sort of economic downturn.
We're seeing the arrival of vice presidents into the rotunda.
Vice President Pence walking in right now.
It may have been Dan Quayle.
It was Dan Quayle, yeah.
Vice President Dan Quayle walked in right before him.
So Ben's prediction that this would not begin promptly.
So far, there's still a chance.
A minute 37?
Yeah, we have a minute 37. They've only got to get in a handful.
I mean, they're not going to wheel out Carter anymore.
They are going to wheel out Biden, though.
He finally could not wheel out.
There we go.
Wow.
There we go, Bubba.
And there's the least happy person in all of America, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The one President Clinton.
The one and only President Clinton.
The president and her husband.
Can you imagine just how terrible it is to be Hillary Rodham Clinton?
You're the person who ushered Donald Trump into power, and then you lost to him.
And then Joe Biden, who you really don't like, won in 2020, and then he lost to him.
And you this entire time have gotten to just be whiny.
Like, that's been your entire career has just been whining.
By the way, do you know that if Joe Biden had remained on the ticket, Barack Obama would still have a lot more political power than he does.
Yeah, yeah.
He played such an enormous card only to be defeated.
I agree with Biden that he would have done better than Kamala, even after the debate, even with the dementia.
I do, too.
I don't think he would have won, but I think he would have done better than Kamala.
It's hard to do worse than she did.
You know, I think that it's hard for me to say that he would have done better.
I think that because he was so senile, he was so gone.
President and Laura Bush walking into the rotunda now.
President Bush had the best line of the first Donald Trump inauguration, which, if you'll recall, as soon as Donald Trump began reading Steve Bannon's speech, God opened the heavens and poured down tears from the sky, at which point, apparently, George W. Bush leaned over to whomever was sitting next to him and said, that was some pretty weird s***.
My favorite George W. Bush moment recently was at the funeral of Jimmy Carter, where he came out and slapped Obama in the stomach.
I just thought, I missed that guy.
I'm sorry.
I have to say that Republican presidents tend to be normies.
Yes.
W was a normie.
He was a normie.
And the thing about Trump is that, yeah, he's weird on social media, but we all know Donald Trump.
He's the guy at the end of the war.
Correct.
We all know him.
Even though he doesn't drink.
No one has ever met Kamala Harris because she's animatronic.
And there's Barack, and Michelle is not there.
Wow, that is President Obama without Michelle?
Or Jennifer Aniston.
They're having those rumors.
Notably.
I wasn't going to say it.
That is actually...
Which is shocking, because the other rumor was...
She didn't seem like his type, let's put it that way.
But, you know, when I saw Michelle wasn't going to come, I said, okay, well, it happens.
She didn't go to Carter's funeral.
But that was really weird to see him walk down alone.
It was really weird that she wasn't at Carter's funeral.
Truly.
She's signed out.
She's had it.
She's like, I'm done.
I don't like any of these people.
I'm done.
More power to her.
She signed out, but the question is, of what has she signed out?
Now we're awaiting the arrival of our current president for only a few moments longer, Joe Biden.
Might take a while.
Here comes the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Roberts.
Kavanaugh.
Alito.
Thomas.
Thomas, yep.
Gorsuch.
Kagan.
Gorsuch, yeah.
Only a few more moments before we see Donald Trump enter the rotunda.
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We've just launched new technology, a new app, and it's probably the best place to catch this content.
Now that's never been true before, but we're really proud of this new technology that we've rolled out.
It's kind of interesting to see these tech guys, Elon Musk and Cook from Apple.
You know, it's a new generation of barons, you know.
It's a new generation.
There's also something to...
Even when you mentioned that Tim Cook was there, I thought, well, it's good.
Obviously, he's not a conservative.
But, you know, he has to be there because he's a huge figure in American public life.
Runs one of the biggest companies in the history of the world.
And we sometimes forget it because we're so clean about our civics.
But, you know, the guys who run these big private institutions wield a huge amount of political power, for better or worse.
Of course.
Well, and imagine...
They all kicked Donald Trump personally off of their platforms four years ago.
And today he ascends to be the most powerful man on planet Earth.
I think you probably kissed the ring in that circle.
Oh, maybe we overreacted just a little bit, Mr. President.
Business is good, right?
Business is good for America.
These guys have built some of the most beautiful businesses in the world.
And it's great they're coming around.
The businesses that they built have great power to do good.
And what I want from them is...
Some acknowledgement that what they are doing now is a permanent shift in the wind, and it's done a shift back two years from now.
It's impossible all the time.
Honestly, I think one of the ways that they do that is actually doing public appearances with people on the right.
They refuse to actually get in public, and they're not doing that anymore.
That's changing.
Here's the Trump family.
Here's the Trump family.
All right.
Ivanka and Don Jr. And Tiffany and Eric, and Barron, who is enormous.
He's tall, yeah.
Octavian Joe, Jared Kushner.
Yeah, he's probably home with the kids.
I didn't see any of the spouses.
Oh, yeah.
There were no spouses there.
Right.
I think you're right.
I'm very excited for Baron to change his name officially to Augustus.
I think that will happen.
Is that 28?
Does that happen?
I don't know.
The funniest thing that's happened so far was the exiling of Kimberly Guilfoyle to Greece.
That is by far the funniest thing.
I'm sorry, it's funny.
Like, you break up with the president's son, and then they're like, and you shall be delegated to all.
If I could get Court of St. James, I might be willing to.
I'm a married man.
Court of St. James.
That's the best one, you know.
It used to be when England was England.
That's right.
I'm not sure you want to go on that.
Make Europe great again.
Or just start by making England great again.
That could really happen, this right-wing movement across the West.
It's so encouraging.
Our colleague, Dr. Jordan Peterson, plans to devote much of the next four years to that particular fight.
Really?
Yes.
He thinks there's a real opportunity in Europe.
I spent some of last night.
I saw Liz Truss was in town, former UK Prime Minister.
Nigel Farage is in town.
I haven't seen him yet, but he's been going around to some of the parties.
So you do have...
Georgia Maloney is in town.
I'm happy Mille was here.
Mille showed up.
That's good.
My boy.
Yeah.
Love me some Mille.
He's doing great.
He's doing fantastic.
It's unbelievable what he's doing.
What he's doing is insane.
He actually has...
I'm in the black.
Now, what I want to know is, did my favorite Latin American strongman make it, Naive Bukele?
I believe he is coming.
All right, here we go.
I think Bukele is coming.
And my personal favorite Latin American strongman, Justin Trudeau.
Wow, we really just teed it up and put it right there out of the bar.
As my father taught me, never pass up a cheat.
I actually was going to say, when he announced he was leaving, There is something unique happening across the world, and you do see this kind of thing happen where very akin leaders across the world tend to get elected at kind of the same time.
And I think that that's going to bode well for Europe.
I mean, the right-wing movements in France, in Spain, with the Vox Party, in France and the national rally.
In Germany, with both AFD in the center and the center of the Democratic Union, there is something happening, and it is a revolt, a revolt of the people against the elitist nonsense that said you can open up your borders endlessly and hand out cash like it's candy while becoming weaker and weaker in the world.
That was Germany's third try.
They finally destroyed Europe.
Two shots, man.
And they figured this one out.
I give them Franco-Prussian.
I think they were...
Even thinking, you know, that...
The Brexit preceded the Trump election so closely.
Orban and Maloney.
But this goes back much further.
You think of Thatcher and Reagan coming up at the same time.
And why is that?
Because we are one civilization and America is the global hegemon.
So that's obviously going to lead trends and I think that bodes very well for Europe.
I would like to see the phrase far-right banned from the newspapers.
I like the word far-right if you're actually referring to the far-right.
It really bothers me when you're just like...
Describe you or me.
We're all far right.
We're like the dead center of the mainstream.
I remember when you were the alt-right.
That was one of my favorites.
I was reading about the alternative for Deutschland, you know, the AfD party, and the lesbian libertarian leader who thinks that Hitler was a communist.
She is a far right leader, I mean.
Who knew?
First Lady Jill Biden.
Dr. Jill Biden.
I thought I'd seen the last of Doug Emhoff, and he's still there.
I apologize.
Dr. Doug Emhoff.
There he is.
The worst Jew in America, Doug Emhoff.
I cannot stand that guy.
I'm sorry to hear he's a Jew.
I didn't realize he was a Jew.
Yeah, exactly.
He's kept it a secret.
It's a big secret.
I mean, it was a secret until the last five minutes when they needed him to be.
They are running a fairly...
I have to say, they started punctually.
Are you going to try and take credit for that clock?
That's it.
The clock is running the government.
But it began right on time.
Now you're shifting the definition.
No, no.
These are like announced entries.
There's a guy with a staff and he says, hear ye, hear ye, the right honorable Dr. Jill Biden.
Speaking of Doug Emhoff...
Look how pissed off Jill Biden is.
Look how happy Emhoff is.
He's like, I'm out.
I was wondering if he were sad today, like when President Trump started speaking, what do you think the odds are that he becomes so enraged that he just starts smacking all the women all around? - Remember that time the entire media just ignored that story?
That's an amazing thing.
Will the Emhoff-Harris nuptials last her defeat?
Will they survive the defeat?
I mean, as long as they find each other mutually useful seems to be the rule in Democratic circles.
In Democrat circles.
That's exactly right.
Sometimes in Republican circles too, but mainly in political circles just generally.
The utility seems to outweigh the morality.
I think Jill legitimately likes Joe, and I think she voted for Trump because she likes Joe and hates Kamala.
Will Kamala go run for something else?
Yes, governor of California.
No.
And she'll stand a reasonable chance because California doesn't learn anything from us.
California is iconic, which is why we all left California.
Literally all of us.
The greatest state in the country, and they have literally turned it into a dumpster fire.
Yes, because the weather is a drug.
Do you think Kamala still has a chance in the wake of even what's happening in California?
You don't think maybe there's a little bit of an awakening there?
I'm hopeful that there could be an awakening.
If California can't wake up after the greatest man-made...
Disaster in living memory, then nothing will wake them up.
The problem is the Republicans tend to give up.
They've given up on New York and they give up on California.
Republicans could win back California after this.
Yeah.
I sure like it in Tennessee.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm not going back.
You're going back?
No, absolutely.
I haven't missed it for 10 minutes.
Stop with it.
Stop servicing.
These darn Republicans who give up from California.
All right, see you guys.
The big problem is that for the Republican Party to actually win there, they'd actually have to run on the issues that matter, like running the state well and crime.
And they never did that.
They always were running on, like, education.
Right.
You're always going to bid on education.
It's a giant fail.
Kamala Harris will run there, and I think that she stands a pretty good shot of winning because, you know, right now it's a high watermark for kind of love for Trump.
There always is this honeymoon period.
Trump's actually getting one.
He didn't get one last time.
Yeah, he didn't get one last time.
This time he gets one.
That's right.
But six months from now, the left will have reconstituted in some form or fashion, and Kamala, as running for governor of California, now that Newsom has completely blown it, could be the person who says, listen, I ran against him, I only lost because Joe Biden, and it, like, give me the shot again.
And the intersectionality, like, we all think DEI is dead.
DEI is dead for reasonable people.
For California, it's still very much a law.
Oh, sure.
And Donald Trump should endorse her if she runs for governor.
You deserve it.
You deserve it.
What happened to your clock?
Well, they're trying to find Biden.
He's wandered off.
They were doing so well.
It is kind of disappointing.
I like to think that if we could hear maybe somebody saying a prayer or something, and we'd be like, oh, yeah, well, that makes sense.
I don't think so.
They're all talking to each other.
Yeah, it's probably just all falling apart on me.
All my plans in this way.
Baron is like...
Nikola Jokic.
He's dominating everybody.
He's amazing.
Last night I was talking to Gorka and Calvin Robinson.
I felt like a munchkin.
Oh, I didn't even see Calvin.
He shaved off that afro I talked to for 20 minutes.
When he walked away, I went, oh, that's Calvin Robinson.
Our friends from The Blaze were at the parties last night.
We were at the TPUSA gala last night.
All five of us, I believe.
And Dr. Peterson.
And our buddies Glenn Beck and Tyler Carden and Gaston Mooney.
Who are like...
Giants.
Yeah.
They're all giants.
I know.
We need to carry around apple boxes when we're around these Nordic, you know...
Speak for yourself, guys.
Right.
And around Walsh.
The problem is that Matt's actually a small forward, but in our lineup, he's the center.
We're a very undersized team, right?
That's just what it is.
It's a Jewish basketball team, basically.
You guys do make me feel very tolerant.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
I did get home in time to watch your team get humiliated in what was essentially the Super Bowl, because nobody can beat either of those teams.
We were at our fancy ball last night, and I was watching the game on the phone.
I was watching Matt get sadder and sadder as the night went on.
The last moment was heartbreaking.
I was watching Matt, and watching his heart break, and we were in the loudest room in maybe the history of the movie.
Everyone's celebrating on time.
And just Matt dying inside.
I was like, this is the closing moment of his movie, right?
Like the camera pans out and it's Matt lonely in a crowd, all sad on the inside.
And I was like, at that moment I realized that Matt had out miserable'd me, which I didn't think was possible, 'cause I hate giant parties. - Oh my God, giant parties. - You must like, you like giant parties. - You know, I get a kick out of 'em a lot and I like seeing people who you don't ordinarily see.
So I've been to about a billion political soirees.
What is really interesting about this spate of them, we've gone to however many, half a dozen or a dozen, is...
The group of people is unlike anything you've ever seen in Republican politics.
So you're walking in.
There is Conor McGregor.
You turn over.
Here's some, like, rapper.
You turn over here.
Kid Rock smoking a cigar inside.
Kid Rock smoking a cigar in the world.
I will say, I talked to a lot of people at the party last night.
I have no idea what anybody said.
Anybody said, yeah.
You just kind of nod.
I agreed to a lot of things.
- I said this to you last night, Matt, but this attractive woman was speaking to me at one point and she was much taller than me again because Jewish basketball team, and she had leaned down and she was saying something to me.
You were standing with me and I was trying for all my might to listen.
And we got to the point where she stopped talking and it became clear that she had asked me a question and I had not heard one syllable.
- No, you couldn't hear anything. - Not a single syllable.
- I believe you said, "I really wish I could have heard a single word you just said.
Sorry, you know.
Nothing.
But even that, you know, these events are so schmoozy.
That's just what these inaugurations are.
But here, there's just this...
There's the slippery, kind of slick D.C. event, and then there's the just exuberant D.C. event, and this is the latter.
It's very fully in the latter.
I think this was always part of the Charm of Trump.
On the way here, we had to walk for a thousand miles through a blizzard to get here.
I was just taking a look at the aesthetics of MAGAville, because D.C. is now MAGAville.
This is MAGA country, so Jussie Smollett should have made his case this weekend.
He got it wrong.
Polar vortex.
This is MAGA country.
And the thing about the Trump aesthetic that's hilarious is that just aesthetically it's really ugly.
Okay, like the Trump hats, right?
I love them.
I love them.
But this is kind of my point, is that everything aesthetically Trump is 1986. Family reunion in Minneapolis.
At the Mall of America.
The hats are square and boxy.
They don't actually fit your head properly.
And the ties are too wide.
And all the signs are in Times New Roman font.
It's hip to be square.
That's the whole thing.
And so somebody was saying, why are we playing God Bless the USA by Lee Greenland for the 127th time?
Because you know what?
Most Americans actually like this kind of stuff.
They kind of like this kind of stuff.
It turns out that the aesthetic of the 1980s, we kind of like it.
It turns out that Huey Newton, Huey Lewis was not wrong.
We like remembering back to a time when our nation was still powerful and ascendant and confident.
And our hope is that in Trump's second term, we're able to be that kind of man.
And now we can all feel like Patrick Bateman, like, hey, left, you like Huey Lewis in the news?
I will say, it is bizarre and surreal to walk around D.C. and everyone, everywhere, is a conservative.
It's like, everywhere you go.
It's such a change.
I'm looking forward to it, because I live right near here, and it's going to change everything about my actual existence.
I love it, yeah.
We were greeted as liberators.
Who's this guy?
I don't know.
This is a close-up.
Where's his tie?
Where's his tie?
Yeah, that's...
You're at the inauguration of the President of the United States.
This is one of the things I... Who are you?
Oh, he's singing.
Oh, he's singing, okay.
Oh, he's the opera singer.
Oh, this guy's good.
You have to have an open throat.
Because I was going to say, I was going to say that's very Italian of him.
But that checks out.
That actually works.
Oh, man.
I feel bad that I mocked this guy.
Yeah, no, he's great.
- I've heard him sing before. - Imagine being in the rotunda of the Capitol with those vast acoustics in that space listening to this.
Can I get somebody to turn up my ear a little bit?
I'm having a hard time hearing this.
I guess not.
He's not the star saying the letter.
No.
But at the Trump rallies, he'll sing opera.
Actually, like, pretty beautiful arias.
I mean, Nessun Dorma.
That's very Trump, right?
It's like, memories from cats.
Yeah, yeah.
Nessun Dorma, he'll do.
He's such a normie.
Like, everyone knows Trump, right?
Like, his tastes are absolutely mid.
Right?
They're absolutely mid-brand.
Right?
It's like, he likes memories from cats.
And he likes Nessun Dorma.
Right?
And he likes My Way by Sinatra.
Like, everything that he does is like...
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
He represents the people.
He is the avatar of the American spirit of the last 50 years.
There's no question about it.
Even in his garishness.
And he always was.
This is the thing that, you know, those of us who underestimate him.
So I went from estimating him properly to underestimating him to, I think, estimating him properly.
Meaning in 2012, I wrote a column suggesting he should run for president of the United States.
That's right!
That was when he was thinking about running against Romney, and I wrote a column in 2012 saying he's the most likely person to win.
And then in 2015, 2016, it was like, okay, maybe he's past his prime and he's too wild, and then he won, of course.
And the thing about Trump...
That dude's been internationally famous for literally 50 years.
For 50 years.
I mean, he was in rap videos.
I mean, this guy was in McDonald's commercials.
The idea that he came out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere politically, but he certainly didn't come out of nowhere culturally.
He was always a representative of a giant chunk of the public because you cannot be that famous for that long without being a representative of something in the public spirit that people actually like. - He's what we said instead of Rockefeller.
In the old days you would have said Rockefeller, then you said Trump, all through the 80s. - Especially as a New Yorker, there has not been a day of my life that I have been conscious and not aware of Donald Trump.
That's not an exaggeration.
So when people said he's this radical fringe guy, what are you talking about? - He's still Trump from the block.
He's still Trump from the block.
I was watching some movie, I can't remember what it was, like a 1993 movie, and just randomly they started talking about like, well maybe Trump will be president.
People would drop that routinely in like the 80s.
So should we be that, Chuck?
Maybe not.
Maybe there was such a cultural disconnect that happened.
In the post-Bush era.
And Hollywood turned so far left and culture turned so far left that we actually just forgot about the people who were really, really, really famous for a very, very long time in the United States.
It also exposed a lot of this lawfare.
When they went after him with all these investigations, I thought they'd been investigating this guy since I was a child.
They're not going to find anything.
If he were dirty, that had got him by now.
He's just not.
I'm glad that we could just talk over this entire beautiful performance.
He wasn't wearing a tie.
He doesn't care about the arts.
That's what I keep saying.
Maybe people are going, who was that guy?
How did he get in here?
Well, I mean, it's better than the lesbian dance troupe that was planned for Kamala's.
Oh, God.
Somebody else is coming.
Who is this?
I don't know.
It's like a mystery curtain.
I'm enjoying the mystery curtain.
The curtain of mystery.
It's the Undertaker!
Hey, brother!
He starts pulling his shirt off.
Who are these people?
I don't know who any of these people are.
Yeah, I actually don't know.
We're doing a great job of narrating this.
Yeah.
We're supposed to be telling the people at home.
Yeah, so great job, support staff, for letting us know all these people who are walking through.
I'm going to blame it on you.
A bunch of random people that we don't know just walk.
If you're listening...
I'm going to explain in detail.
It just happened.
A curtain opened, some random people we don't know walked through.
But the men had ties on, so that was good.
Nice.
Random people who were invited to the inauguration of the President of the United States inside the rotunda.
Ah, here's our first lady, Melania Trump, entering into the rotunda.
Very nice hat.
She has excellent taste.
Do you think we could put her on the covers of some magazines?
Oh, it's coming.
I guarantee you.
If Michelle Obama won't appear on them anymore, I guess there's room for the supermodel first lady.
That was the pettiest thing about that.
Yeah, I don't know.
She got, like, Aubrey Hepburn toast.
No, she's really got the attention.
Bold to wear a hat, too.
It says that you're confident in your sense of style.
That's a great analysis, though.
I wasn't expecting actual fashion analysis from our straight fashion correspondent, Jeremy Boring.
We depend on Jeremy.
I like to say straight-ish.
The fashion commentary.
Color palette analysis of what that means for the future of the country.
She's painting in bold colors.
The contrasting black and white just demonstrates how bold this presidency is going to be.
It's a concession, too, from Jill Biden that she decided to wear blue, unlike on Election Day.
She looks so miserable.
She does.
She looks absolutely miserable.
Not miserable at all.
I think the proper man.
You're a merciful man.
God comes for us all.
That's true.
His justice.
Here comes the Hakeem Jeffries.
I want you to play that when I come into my room for a while.
I'm hoping for a Charles II. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, the Honorable Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President of the United States, the Honorable Kamala Davy Harris.
She is so unhappy.
We're going to go ahead and kick this over to the live broadcast of Donald Trump's inauguration.
Stick around afterwards.
We'll be back to give you more inane commentary.
And fashion advice.
We'll see you guys there.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Associate Justice Kavanaugh to administer the Vice Presidential Oath of Office.
Please raise your right hand.
And repeat after me.
I, James David Vance, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge The
duties of the office.
The duties of the office.
On which I'm about to enter.
On which I'm about to enter.
So help me God.
So help me God.
Congratulations, Mr. Vice President.
Thank you.
to administer the presidential oath of office.
Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, And will to the best of my ability.
Preserve, protect, and defend.
Preserve, protect, and defend.
The Constitution of the United States.
The Constitution of the United States.
So help me God.
So help me God.
Congratulations.
It is my honor and pleasure.
to introduce to you the 45th and the 47th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you very, very much.
Vice President Vance, Speaker Johnson, Senator Thune, Chief Justice Roberts, Justices of the United States Supreme Court, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, President Biden.
Vice President Harris, and my fellow citizens.
The golden age of America begins right now.
From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.
We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.
during every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first.
Our sovereignty will be reclaimed.
Our safety will be restored.
The scales of justice will be rebalanced.
the vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.
And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free. and free.
America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before.
applause I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success.
A tide of change is sweeping the country.
Sunlight is pouring over the entire world.
And America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.
But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face.
While they are plentiful, they will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing in the United States of America.
As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust.
For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.
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.
It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens.
But provide sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.
We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people.
Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina who have been treated so badly.
And other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago.
Or more recently, Los Angeles, where we're watching fires still tragically burn.
From weeks ago, without even a token of defense, they're raging through the houses and communities, even affecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country, some of whom are sitting here right now.
They don't have a home any longer.
That's interesting.
But we can't let this happen.
Everyone is unable to do anything about it that's going to change.
We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world.
And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them.
All of this will change starting today, and it will change very quickly.
My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal, and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith
their wealth, their democracy, and indeed their freedom.
From this moment on, America's decline is over.
Our liberties and our nation's glorious destiny will no longer be denied, and we will immediately restore the integrity, competency, and loyalty of America's government.
Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history, and I've learned a lot along the way.
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.
Just a few months ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear.
But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason.
I was saved by God to make America great again.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
That is why each day under our administration of American patriots, we will be working to meet every crisis with dignity we will be working to meet every crisis with dignity and power and strength.
We will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed.
For American citizens, January 20th, 2025 is...
Liberation Day.
It is my hope that our recent presidential election will be remembered as the greatest and most consequential election in the history of our country.
As our victory showed, the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society, young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, urban, suburban, rural, and very importantly, we had a powerful win in all seven swing states, and the popular vote we won by millions of people.
To the Black and Hispanic communities, I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote.
We set records, and I will not forget it.
I've heard your voices in the campaign, and I look forward to working with you in the years to come.
Today is Martin Luther King Day and his honor.
This will be a great honor.
But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality.
we will make his dream come true.
National unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before.
In everything we do, my administration will be inspired by a strong pursuit of excellence and unrelenting success.
We will not forget our country.
We will not forget our Constitution.
And we will not forget our God.
Can't do that.
Today I will sign a series of historic executive orders.
With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.
It's all about common sense.
First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border.
Applause.
All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.
We will reinstate my "remain in Mexico" policy.
Applause.
I will end the practice of catch and release.
Applause.
And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.
Under the orders I signed today, we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks.
bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities.
As Commander-in-Chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do.
We will do it at a level that nobody's ever seen before.
Next, I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.
The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency.
We will drill, baby, drill.
America will be a manufacturing nation once again, once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have
The largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth, and we are going to use it.
We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top.
And export American energy all over the world.
We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.
With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great...
American autoworkers.
In other words, you'll be able to buy the car of your choice.
We will build automobiles in America again at a rate that nobody could have dreamt possible just a few years ago.
And thank you to the autoworkers of our nation for your inspiring vote of confidence.
We did tremendously with their vote.
I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families.
Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.
For this purpose, we are establishing the external revenue service to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury, coming from foreign sources.
The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before to restore competence and effectiveness to our federal government.
my administration will establish the brand new Department of Government Efficiency.
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.
Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.
Something I know something about.
We will not allow that to happen.
It will not happen again.
Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.
And we are going to bring law and order back to our cities.
This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.
We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based. .
As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.
This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pain.
And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty.
It's going to end immediately.
Our armed forces will be free to focus on their sole mission, defeating America's enemies.
Applause
Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen.
We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.
My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier that That's what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier.
I'm pleased to say that as of yesterday, one day before I assumed office, the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families.
Thank you.
America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.
A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and we will restore the name of a great president.
William McKinley to Mount McKinley where it should be and where it belongs.
President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.
He was a natural businessman and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal.
Which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United States.
The United States, I mean, think of this, spent more money than ever spent on a project before and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal.
We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made.
And Panama's promise to us has been broken.
The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated.
American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape, or form.
And that includes the United States Navy.
And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal.
And we didn't give it to China.
We gave it to Panama.
and we're taking it back.
Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history's greatest civilization,
So as we liberate our nation, we will lead it to new heights of victory and success.
We will not be deterred.
Together we will end the chronic disease epidemic and keep our children safe, healthy, and disease-free.
The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.
and we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.
Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation, and right now our nation is more ambitious than any other than ever.
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.
Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth.
No one comes close.
Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness.
They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers.
When 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.
If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.
Many people thought...
It was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback.
But as you see today, here I am.
the American people have spoken.
I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do.
In America, the impossible is what we do best.
From New York to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, from Chicago to Miami, from Houston to right here in Washington, D.C., our from Houston to right here in Washington, D.C., our country was forged and built by the generations of patriots who gave everything they had for our rights and for our freedom.
They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steel workers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward, and let no obstacle defeat their spirit or their pride.
Amen.
they laid down the railroads.
Raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced.
After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.
With your help, we will restore America's promise.
And we will rebuild the nation that we love, and we love it so much.
We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God.
So to every parent who dreams for their child, and every child who dreams for their future, I am with you, I will fight for you, and I will win for you.
We are going to win like never before.
Thank you.
Thank you.
In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly, but we are going to bring it back and make it great again, greater than ever before.
We will be a nation like no other, full of compassion, courage, and exceptionalism.
Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable.
America will be respected again and admired again, including by people of religion, faith, and goodwill.
We will be prosperous.
We will be proud.
We will be strong and we will win like never before.
We will not be conquered.
We will not be intimidated.
We will not be broken.
And we will not fail.
From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign and independent nation.
We will stand bravely.
We will live proudly.
We will dream boldly.
And nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans.
The future is ours.
And our golden age has just begun.
Thank you.
God bless America.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well, there you have it.
America has a new president, 47 himself, Donald Trump, just inaugurated in the Capitol Rotunda right behind us in a unique and celebratory, for the most part, ceremony.
And I think that the theme of it...
Could best be encapsulated in a quote from Donald Trump during his 29-minute address.
God saved my life to make America great again.
Here with the first reaction, Ben Shapiro.
So, it's a pretty impressive speech from the...
Former and current president of the United States, President Trump, gave a 29-minute address, very short for him.
It began with him suggesting that this was the beginning of a new golden era for the United States.
That obviously is his ambition.
And then he recapped the last four years, which he characterized as dark, depressing.
I think obviously he was right in all of that.
And then he began to lay out an incredibly pragmatic course of action that he's going to pursue immediately.
And that includes everything from designating drug cartels, terrorist organizations, to putting back in place Romain in Mexico, from declaring a national energy emergency, to drill, baby drill, those are his words, to a foreign policy that's led with strength.
He mentioned the release of three hostages by Hamas over the weekend.
President of the United States also dropped some pretty charged language about what he sees as the future of American territory.
He used the phrase manifest destiny to describe the possibility of expanding America's territorial holdings, including regaining some level of control over, for example, the Panama Canal, which he said we did not build for the use of China or ownership by China, which, of course, is exactly correct.
The bottom line is this.
President Trump said in the speech that he is going to be a common-sense president, and that is what you heard.
This is a president who is much more focused than he was during his first term.
This is a president who actually has an agenda.
This is a president who is ready to make that agenda happen in real time.
I don't think that it was the most soaring rhetoric I've ever heard from President Trump, but it was some of the most pragmatic rhetoric that I've ever heard from President Trump.
Again, it was a shorter address than he usually gives in these sorts of situations, and I think that played to his benefit, because again...
It allowed the American public to focus on what he was saying.
He suggested that maybe the most important wars we fight are the ones that we never fight, which is a strategy of deterrence that he has suggested in the past and that he pursued with elacrity during his first term.
He suggested that when it came to foreign trade, that we're not going to impoverish American workers in order to make people rich elsewhere.
We'll see how that manifests in terms of his actual trade and tariff policy.
But the bottom line for President Trump is, was, and will be utilitarian.
It's going to be about winning.
It's going to be a pragmatic winning for the American people.
That's the theme that he kept coming back to.
And he also, in the more inspirational moments of the speech, I think, talked about what he sees as the future of the country and the past of the country, the sort of pioneer spirit that it takes to cross mountains and settle along rivers, the kind of pioneer spirit that it takes to, for example, go to the moon and plant an American flag on the moon.
There's an aspirational nature that's combined with the pragmatic, utilitarian, on-the-ground stuff that I think is going to make President Trump's second term unique and could, in fact, make President Trump's second term historically unique.
It's pretty rare to have a president who's both pursuing the sort of pragmatic, on-the-ground things that are necessary to fix the broken toilet and at the same time pursuing the big ideas, the big bold ideas.
And it's been a long time in this country since we've pursued actual bold ideas.
For a very long time, probably my entire political lifetime, we've been stuck in the position of sort of global managerial class.
It's our job to sort of fix things around the world or fix things at home.
President Trump did talk about innovation.
He talked about dynamism.
He talked about shooting for something that was larger.
And again, there is to his administration a seriousness of purpose that I think a lot of people found lacking at the very beginning of his first administration.
He's learned something.
Again, the key line was one that Jeremy mentioned a moment ago.
And that key line was that God saved his life in order to make America great again.
And I think that because that happened, because he narrowly avoided being assassinated in front of the American people, having his head blown off on national television, I think that he does have a seriousness of purpose.
He could sit back on his laurels.
He could right now say, listen, I won.
I did the thing that I set out to do.
I won one term, I lost, and now I came back and I won a second term in historic fashion.
He's not doing that.
He actually has an agenda.
And you can see that agenda unfolding in real time.
We were noticing, as this speech was unfolding, the White House site had already shifted over to a picture of President Trump with the label, America is back.
And it's worth mentioning right here that on his way out the door, this broke pretty much as President Trump got up to speak, that Joe Biden actually pardoned all the members of his own immediate family in preparation for the idea That Republicans were going to go after them.
That's not true.
The reality is, again, that President Trump, I think, is not going to be focused, and I hope he's not going to be focused, and I think his speech suggests this.
This is not a revenge-minded administration.
This is a forward-looking administration that is looking to solve the problems of the American people, that is going to put American interests first on foreign and domestic policy, and again, is going to be measured by its success.
That was the word he used many times during the speech.
Success.
And that's always been...
President Trump's metric of what matters is success and winning.
I don't think any of that is going to change in the second administration, but I do think the approach will change much more practical.
He actually knows how Washington works now.
He's appointing people who are going to break the things that need to be broken.
I'm not sure I've ever been more optimistic about the country in my lifetime, which is, I think, a far cry from where all of us were four years ago.
Our faith has been placed in President Trump as President of the United States again, and I think that the faith of the American people, I hope and I pray, I think as all of us do, that the hope that the American people have placed in President Trump is well justified.
Again, it's an incredible moment, and I think we are all feeling that.
Can I just say, that was actually maybe my favorite President Trump speech of all time, because I thought that it was...
It was short.
It was punchy.
It got to the point.
It was hopeful and optimistic in a way that we don't hear very often.
We haven't heard in a long time from an American president.
My favorite part of the speech by far is when he used the phrase manifest destiny.
Because I think that we could talk about these practical things.
That was the other great thing about the speech.
There's a lot of practical things we're going to do.
But then there's also, okay, we talk about making America a great country.
What does that actually mean?
What does it mean to be a great country?
I think capturing that feeling of let's go out and conquer something.
Let's expand.
Manifest destiny brings us back to when America was truly a great country.
We haven't had...
He talked about planting a flag on Mars, which I think is another of my favorite parts of this speech.
Because when was the last time America had a triumph?
Like a historic victory where everyone together as one people celebrated something.
Probably the last time was landing on the moon, which was a long time ago.
So I think Trump is talking about Having moments like that where the American people together are triumphant.
Well, we should not divide the high-minded, idealistic stuff from the practical, pragmatic stuff.
I think, to your point, Ben, the focus that he showed in this speech is clear on both sides of it.
So, on the one hand, he says, we will pursue our manifest destiny.
That is an amazing 10,000-degree view.
And then he says...
We're going to take back the Panama Canal.
We built that.
We gave up our lives for that.
We didn't mean to give it to China.
We're going to take that.
He says we're going to secure our nation and our border.
He says we're going to label the cartels terrorist organizations.
That means that a lot of cholos with face tattoos are about to get a visit from U.S. Special Forces.
There's high-minded and there's practical, even on the tariffs.
When he said we're going to rename Mount McKinley...
To be Mount McKinley.
I was joking with Jeremy off camera.
I said, and we're going to pay for it through McKinley tariffs.
And then immediately he set it into his practical tariff policy.
So I think the focus and the actual coherence to this policy is so encouraging.
I was here for it already.
I expected it.
And I felt he delivered even more than I was hoping for from the speech.
You know, I have to say...
First of all, I just want to say this one thing.
I love this freaking country.
I love it so much.
I love the bizarreness of it.
I love the chaos of it.
I love the fact that a Catholic and a Protestant and a Jew and a black guy and a white guy are all praying to God together.
That to me, that's what I'm here for.
You know, I left this country for seven years.
When I came back, I knew exactly why I came back.
I came back for this.
I came back for this moment, but I also came back for this fight and all the fights that we have to go through to keep that thing alive.
You know...
This wasn't Lincoln's second inaugural.
It wasn't like this beautiful let's come together thing.
But even though I believe this is a country for all kinds of people, it's not a country for every idea.
It's not a country for the idea that you can cut children to pieces for some sexual craziness that happens to pass through the university system.
And just in the same way it's not a country for bigotry, it's also not a country to just let anything happen and enforce it by bullying people into silence.
So in a way even though it was not a uniting speech, it was a speech saying we just came through four years of garbage.
It was a speech redefining the borders not just on our southern border, not just on our northern border, but also on our border of ideas.
The ideas of freedom, the idea is liberty when that guy was saying let freedom ring, let freedom ring.
I was thinking absolutely let it ring because it's just been...
We've forgotten it.
It's been four years when the pandemic happened, the fact that people could be forced out of their churches, the fact that people could be forced into their homes, forced to wear masks, forced to take drugs they didn't want.
That is not America.
That is un-American.
I want to talk about the fact that the New York Times headline tomorrow is definitely going to be most divisive inaugural address in U.S. presidential history.
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President Trump and President Biden, along with their wives and their vice presidents, exiting the Capitol here, posing for some photographs as they wait for...
They're vehicles, which presumably at this point will take them to...
I think typically what happens is the president goes and has a luncheon with legislators.
But things are a little bit upside down this week.
I'm not sure if that's exactly what's going to happen or if they're going to take him straight to his live remarks at the auditorium here in Nashville.
He might go back to the White House to sign some executive orders.
He's doing the executive orders.
He's doing the executive orders, they've told us, at 5 p.m.
in front of the crowd at the arena.
There's a great photo.
I don't know if we have access to it, but they've brought the presidential signing desk out into the middle of the arena.
That's unbelievable.
And it's currently set up where 15,000 or 20,000 people will soon be gathering.
I think that the optics, because the optics were very weird this time, right?
You didn't get the big, spanning vistas that are usually behind us.
The National Mall.
That we set up for and spent a lot of money to make sure that we caught on camera.
Because of that, I do think that...
It actually benefited Trump in some ways.
I think that because the speech was quite practical and because it wasn't nearly as soaring as a second inaugural by Lincoln or something, because of that, the intimacy of the surroundings, I think, played in his favor.
He wasn't booming out about remaining in Mexico over a crowd of 750,000 or a million people.
Instead, he was saying it directly to the American people in a pretty intimate fashion.
I think that may be something that is worthwhile and that really...
Plays to his benefit.
Because the truth is, when you're speaking common sense to people, you don't need to thunder it.
You just need to say it.
And I think that what he did in that speech, and again, keeping it focused, like we had an over-under bet that was going to be perfectly transparent with the audience.
And I went way over.
I thought for sure, it's the second inaugural, he's going to go for it, right?
Whatever William Henry Harrison's record is.
You've got to put your name at the top of the record books, man.
If you ain't number one, you're nothing.
But instead, he actually went really, really short for him.
And I think that benefited him.
I'm hoping that he's starting to understand that the power that he has is best used sometimes as pepper rather than as salt.
You know, I think his sincerity came across, too.
I saw Trump at MSG, which is...
Probably one of the coolest speeches he's ever given.
And when he walked on stage, I'd never really seen him do that live, oddly enough.
And I had this thought.
I said, oh, he's Elvis.
That's why this works.
He's Elvis.
That doesn't totally come across on TV. Well, on TV, he brought up God a lot in that speech.
And I don't think it was cynical at all.
I think it was sincere.
I think that guy got religion in a field in Pennsylvania.
In fact, I don't know how you couldn't get religion in that field in Pennsylvania.
Even there, he tied the ideal to the practical when he said, God saved my life.
To make America great again.
I think he believes that deep down in his heart.
I certainly believe that deep down in my heart.
And I think it really came across as truthful.
By the way, I'm going to say that I think the Catholics won the invocation game today.
Yes, absolutely.
Cardinal Dolan's invocation was, I think, the best invocation.
The best prayers I think I've heard in Inauguration.
Yes, yes.
And very, you know, I don't want to use the word aggressive, but sincere and definitive.
There was not the kind of reticence that I've heard.
The first two in particular were masculine.
That's what stood out about them to me.
We do not often get masculine prayers, particularly at events like this.
And now we're saying goodbye to President Biden, who's about to enter the Marine One helicopter, which should take off not far behind us.
I'm trying to hold myself back here.
Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord's place is.
I don't know.
It's a very...
Heavy thing to consider leaving the presidency.
Of course.
But not for us.
He is being replaced by someone who knows how it feels.
Also, does he understand that that's happening to him?
I mean, I think that's the central question.
He can run again.
You know, America's third non-consecutive.
I don't know if you were watching his face when the singer was singing the national anthem.
He looked like he was going to weep.
He looked like he was going to weep and not tears of joy, that's for sure.
And they were tough on him, you know, Franklin Grant came out and he gave that, he said, you know, this is a great, we've been saved, four years were very dark.
I mean, Trump was tough on him.
The first ten minutes of the speech was Trump basically just curb stomping him.
He was like, here's all the things that are wrong with the country because of what's happened over the course of the last few years.
He's looking right behind him.
Here we have...
President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance seeing off President Biden, whose helicopter is about to take off.
I think probably from our jib shot, we may even be able to catch the image.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Catch you later.
Yeah, now we're all looking for the helicopter.
That's the new helicopter covering it.
Well, I mean, it did warm up out here, so theoretically they could have done the inauguration out here.
It got real nice.
Certainly.
The point you made about this being a small, intimate area, it made him sound much more confident.
He wasn't enforcing his will.
He was just saying, I'm going to do this stuff.
I like that a lot.
Even the little asides work better intimately.
He says, you know, we're going to stop the persecution of political enemies.
I know something about that.
You're totally right.
If he says it softly, it's different than if he's thundering that to a million people.
I totally agree with that.
Again, I think that he spelled out some very practical policies day one.
And if you list those policies, those are 80-20 policies.
Those are 80-20 policies.
One of the things that President Trump, I think, is really doing here is the thing that you're supposed to do when you get in office, which is focus on the policies where the vast majority of Americans actually like the policy and get off on the right foot.
So when he's talking about border enforcement or remain in Mexico or we're going to...
Go after criminal aliens, right?
He specifically said criminal as opposed to, like, all illegal aliens because he can see the polling, which suggests that it's a little bit wishy-washy about, like, all legal, like, most recent.
But criminals is like an 80-20 issue.
Oh, that's right.
He picked a bunch of 80-20 issues.
And, by the way, one of my favorite parts of the speech that we haven't mentioned yet was him talking about the death of diversity, equity, and inclusion, right?
Yeah, that's right.
The end of DEI and the return of merit is a huge, huge thing and maybe a defining feature of what...
I think the defining feature of what's made America exceptional in the first place.
I also want to buy, I said, I do want to buy some stock in superlatives.
If somebody has an ETF in superlatives, I'm a all-in.
Life savings.
I'm going to get a lot of use of superlatives over the course of the next four years.
But once again, DEI is un-American.
It's just racism.
It's just actually institutionalized racism.
And it should be just kicked out the door.
The fact that we have to have an executive order to declare that people are male and female is like...
That almost made me sad when Trump said there are only two sexes.
And from today forward, American government will recognize that one plus one equals two.
And that's where we've come at this.
And we sort of have to stay there.
And now we get to the practical business of governing.
And I think one of the things that Trump has a lot of latitude to do, and this is one place where he's unique, is because he has built such a broad coalition, when it comes to the actual policymaking at the congressional level, right?
There's a couple different levels of policy.
His executive orders, I think...
We're all going to be very, very happy with as a general rule.
When it comes to legislative policy, it's going to get messy.
And it's going to get messy real quick.
Mike Johnson has basically no majority.
He has a majority of one vote.
One vote.
And meanwhile, over in the Senate, there's a majority of three.
But two of those three.
But you also have Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins.
Pass small bills reinforcing the executive orders.
Don't go for giant omnibus where there's going to be three years of negotiations.
Every one of these executive orders.
But here's the problem.
The reason, okay, so here's why that's not going to happen.
Ideally, and this is where the battle is going to be, and I think that we need to be practical about it.
Here's President Biden's helicopter taking off.
If we go into our wide shot, we'll probably be able to see.
Well.
Coming around.
There it is.
Wow.
See ya.
Catch you later, dude.
See ya, buddy.
Wow, the last time a helicopter took off from this kind of disaster was Vietnam.
I'm going to take a selfie with Biden leaving.
Bye.
Catch you later.
Toodles.
It couldn't come a moment.
All right.
Catch you later.
Toodaloo.
Wow.
The crowd behind us equally happy to see President Biden heading back to Delaware.
Or if you'll enjoy some nice beach time with the newly hardened family.
I will say that some of the most...
He didn't pardon the grandkids, though.
We can still go after the grandkids.
I think one of the most enjoyable aspects of actually being here, obviously it was kind of a cold vantage and we didn't get the beautiful view of the inauguration that we had expected to have.
But we did get to feel the rudders as the former president left.
In the exact moment that President Trump finished saying the oath of office...
A cannon salute broke out on the grounds of the Capitol.
It's a 21-gun salute.
Terrifying on security.
You wouldn't have been able to experience it unless you were just right here, so visceral.
To get back to the legislative policy question, I think that one of the reasons you're seeing Republicans say things like one giant bill is because when you're trying to cobble together coalitions that are this broad and this diverse, it is incredibly difficult to pass narrowly focused bills without losing two or three votes who can then hold up the entire work.
So I think that the goal here from President Trump, and it is going to take the bully pulpit to do it.
Our hope as conservatives is going to be that conservatives do hold up the works enough to actually get some conservative policy in there.
At the end of the day, in order for anything to get done, everything is going to be a crap sandwich.
That's just the reality.
And it's going to be especially a crap sandwich because they can only do this through reconciliation.
There has never been, as far as I'm aware, in modern times, two reconciliation bills passed in the first year.
It's usually one.
And so what they're gonna try and do, if they can get away with it with the Office of Management and Budget and with CBO, is going to be whether they can get through border security and reinforcement of the Trump tax cuts.
Everything else is gonna be executive policy.
And that's just an unfortunate way that the government has now come to operate.
And that's gonna have to be the next step for the American people, is gonna be to elect a coalition of Republicans broad enough that you can actually go through a normal appropriations process when you're trying to pass a damned bill.
Well, if you can't, then you don't actually have a legislature anymore.
Yeah, that is the problem.
That's what it really comes down to.
And it's not the president's fault.
That's the legislature's fault for sending all their power away.
I would also like to see a bill, a law, if not a constitutional amendment, saying that laws have to be a readable size.
If you have a thousand-page law, you don't know what's in it.
Like that continuing resolution.
They can do it.
They went from a 1,200, 1,500-page CR down to a 150-page CR overnight.
We will say, though, that AI is going to change this.
I'm not being glib.
You can take a 1,200-page bill, upload it into Grok, and you can ask Grok any question you want about it.
It will tell you everything that's in the bill instantly.
It is a complete game-changer, and I think that activists and watchdog groups will make faster use of this than actual congressmen.
We will know what is in these bills.
We have Donald Trump now, the 47th president, going in to have a luncheon with congressional leaders, and after which there's typically a parade which would go right behind us down Pennsylvania Avenue.
And now that's going to take place inside an arena here in Washington, D.C.
But we also have big news at The Daily Wire because with this new four-year term of President Trump, we're also going to be expanding our news division and really covering D.C. in a much deeper way than we've ever done before.
And that includes having a brand new White House correspondent, which we've never had before, and now we will have.
And listen, if J.D. Vance's remarks on this are accurate, maybe we'll even eventually get a seat toward the front.
Because apparently, according to Vice President Vance and Donald Trump, they want to kick the legacy guys to the back of the room, which, you know, wouldn't hurt my heart any.
But we do have this wonderful new White House correspondent.
She's been with the Daily Wire for some time now.
In fact, she was with us for a while, left, and is now back.
And it's our very own...
I know that I said on X that it was all the guys at the Babylon Bee who also would have been good at the job.
But it is, in fact, our very own Mary Margaret Olihan, who is here with us right now.
Mary Margaret!
Hello!
Thank you so much for having me back on.
And it's an honor to be Daily Wire's new White House correspondent.
I don't take this lightly.
I'm very excited to bring the news to our viewers.
And after the last four years, I think it's more clear than ever that new media is so important.
We belong in the briefing room.
We need to be bringing the American public these stories and sharing with them the truth that legacy media has no intention of ever sharing with them.
So I'm excited to be in there.
I'm excited to be asking questions to the Trump administration.
I'm excited to be sharing what the legacy media is not going to be asking them as well.
So, big year for us.
Big next four years for all of us.
We're really excited to have you with the company, of course, and to have you in this new role.
You'll be in the White House on a day-to-day basis, being able to ask the kinds of questions that we haven't been able to ask as conservatives in previous administrations.
You look really, really cold right now.
It is very, very cold.
I'm standing outside of Union Station here in Washington, D.C., where we've been talking to all of these Trump supporters who, like you were sharing earlier, wanted to be on the National Mall for the inauguration, and unfortunately they can't be.
But I will tell you, Jeremy, I have not spoken to anyone that was in a bad mood, anyone that was discouraged.
And I might add, it is freezing out here, but they're all beaming, they're smiling.
We walked down to Kelly's Irish Times, which is one of my favorite pubs here in DC.
The entire bar was filled with Trump supporters.
They were so happy and excited as they cheered and watched Trump be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States.
And Tom, who's working the camera with me and I, we were saying it's some of our favorite footage we've ever gotten, these Trump supporters reacting to this inauguration.
So, really awesome day and it's so exciting to be here.
It's really unique for DC.
I mean, it's the first time I've ever been here and felt like conservatives had a real presence on the streets.
Red hats everywhere, sequined vests everywhere.
It really is, it's MAGA country in D.C. right now.
It is.
It is.
You walk outside and you can hear people listening to the inauguration on their phone.
A bunch of teenage boys just walked by us and they were singing the whole, like, na-na-na-na song, hey, hey, hey, goodbye, about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
So it's just so much fun.
And the MAGA hats are everywhere.
I don't remember this in 2017. I know, you know, there was a strong Trump presence, but this is unlike that.
that and i think part of that is this coalition that trump has built whether it's the maha moms uh...
or the parents united against transgender ideology or people who are just sick and tired of the economy being so bad in having crack criminals come across our border but this it's a really unified friday and look i lived in d_c_ for ten years i'm not used to this many masculine men walking out i'll be a year's out there it's a it's a new scene We'll be checking back in with you.
Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olehan, and we're going to go to the Capitol again right now where newly inaugurated Vice President J.D. Vance is giving remarks.
President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
Now he's right.
I looked, I said, oh, look at this beautiful sunny day.
We blew it.
We blew it.
And then I went outside and we were freezing.
You would have been very unhappy.
The sun was very deceptive, I will tell you.
It is cold out.
And I'm sort of saying, you know, that was so beautiful today.
Maybe they should do it there every four years.
Does that make sense?
I don't know.
Because, you know, the outdoor thing is really good, but it gets a little cold around this time of the year, as some people have noticed.
And a lot of times they suffer through it.
There was no suffering in that room.
It was 72 degrees.
It was perfect.
We're the best acoustics I think I've ever heard in a room.
This is not so bad either.
But I just want to say, you're a younger, far more beautiful audience than I just spoke to.
And I want to keep it off the record.
I want to keep that off the record.
Because I don't want to have all those big shots up there.
I don't want to think you're more powerful than them.
You look better than them.
And I love you.
Now, we just had a great time.
We just had a great day.
This was amazing.
You know, when you think we took a journey.
I mentioned in the speech, a lot of people said that was not a journey that was possible.
And it was indeed possible.
I didn't really know too much about what they were saying when they said that.
A lot of people felt it.
And we hooked up with J.D. very early.
I watched J.D. over a period of time.
I endorsed him in Ohio.
He was a great senator and very, very smart.
The only one smarter than him was his wife.
I would have chosen her, but somehow the line of succession didn't work that way, right?
But now she's great and he's great.
This is a great, beautiful couple and unbelievable.
Career, I just said to him, you are very upwardly mobile.
Because he hasn't been doing it that long.
But he picked it up so quickly.
Remember, the first week was a little bit like the fake news was hitting him really hard.
And I said, ooh, this may be tough.
But after that, it was smooth sailing for him.
He took on everybody.
He took on the meanest.
I don't want to use the word corrupt because we're into a new system.
So let's wait till the corruption begins, because it will.
But he took on some pretty mean people, and he handled it well.
I want to also congratulate Mike Johnson for the job that he's doing.
Steve, we gave him a majority of almost nothing.
And then I said, to make it tougher on him, let me take two or three of the people, right?
I said, he'll only have to suffer with that for about three months.
How are they doing, by the way?
Is that moving along?
Totally unified.
I said, do you mind if I take this one, that one, and a couple of others?
He didn't mind.
He can handle it.
No, he's a man that's liked by everybody.
I've never met a man like this.
How many is it?
219 or 220?
220. And of the 220, 219 really like him.
I noticed he got one negative vote once about two weeks ago.
But I think even 220 like him, if you want to know the truth.
And that's very unusual.
I know a lot of nice guys in Congress, and they have 35 people that hate them.
So if you have 35 people that hate you and you only have one or two or three votes, you'll have five, I think.
But that's going to be like, you know, the good news is when we get to that five number, it's going to feel like a massive majority.
You could be really nasty to a couple of them, at least.
So it's going to feel like hitting your head on the wall and stopping.
It feels so good to stop.
But he's done a fantastic job.
And Steve Scalise, he's our hero because, you know, I was with him.
You talk about being shot.
I was with him.
He got some bad ones, and his incredible wife, and she really loves him, you know?
You never know about that.
I've been with other people.
They were doing poorly, and the wife is like looking at her watch.
She can't get out of the hospital fast enough.
How's he doing?
I don't know.
He's all right.
That woman was a mess.
She was crying and crying.
No, they're going to take him.
They're going to take him.
I told Steve when he finally woke up, it was a while, too.
The doctor told me it was the most blood they've ever transfused in any patient.
They've never done anything like it.
And here he is, the picture of strength, right?
And he's been a great friend of mine.
With a family, because of a family.
And what a job you did.
It worked out pretty much better than we even thought, right?
And I did have a couple of things, you know, to say that were extremely controversial.
And between J.D. and Melania and anybody else that heard, please, sir, it's such a beautiful, unifying speech.
Please, sir, don't say these things.
I said, I'm telling you, it's going to play great.
They say, you're right.
For this group of people, it's going to play great.
You're the only ones I heard.
Oh, but we had some beauties, didn't we, Melania?
She said, sir.
Calls me sir when she's angry.
I said, no.
No, I'm only kidding.
I better say I'm only kidding because the press is going to pick that one up.
Loudly.
No, but she said, no, I think it would be terrible.
It's such a nice speech.
I think it's, you know, it all depends on your delivery.
How was the delivery?
Was it good?
But she said it's such a beautiful, such a beautiful speech.
You can't put things in there that you are going to put in.
And I was going to talk about the J6 hostages.
But you'll be happy because, you know, it's action, not words that count.
And you're going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages.
And I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, where they literally, I mean, what they did is they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings, practically not a thing left.
They deleted all the information on Nancy Pelosi having turned down the offer of 10,000 soldiers.
You wouldn't have needed 10,000.
You could have had 500, and it would have stopped.
Because we may have had a million people that day, the people that were there.
You don't see any photographs, but we have a lot of great photos.
But you don't see those photographs.
They don't put them in.
They show the people at the Capitol.
But I was talking about that.
I was going to talk about that.
They said, please don't bring that up right now.
You can bring it up tomorrow.
I said, how about now in front of the very...
I'll bring it up right now.
You know, this little time delay is good because we're getting great reviews on the speech.
Now watch.
They'll take the speech and say, I didn't like it because he left there and he's talked to people.
But we're giving you a little more information than we gave up since.
But no.
They pardoned a lot of people.
They pardoned, before we even get to today, they pardoned, what is it, 33 murderers?
Absolute murderers.
The worst murderers.
You know, when you get the death sentence in the United States, you have to be bad.
Because they don't give it much.
And he pardoned almost everybody having a death sentence.
And if you went through the crimes that were committed, you wouldn't even believe them, the level of violence.
The people that were killed, the innocence of people that were killed and children killed by these people, and he pardoned them for whatever reason.
He spared them, but they didn't spare the people that they killed.
Who knows what happens in the future?
It's one of the worst because a lot of times they let them out early after that.
You know, they say you're going to be in for life, but then all of a sudden they get let out for good behavior, and then they go on a rampage.
It's one of those little things, right?
But I was going to talk about that.
But I was really going to talk about the level of, you know, what's going on?
Why are we doing this?
Why are we trying to help a guy like Millie?
Why are we doing Millie?
He was pardoned.
What he said.
Terrible what he said.
Why are we helping some of the people?
Why are we helping Liz Cheney?
I mean, Liz Cheney is a disaster.
She's a crying lunatic and crying.
Crying Adam Kinzinger.
He's a super cryer.
I never saw the guy not crying.
He's always crying.
I looked at him.
I remember years ago, he was actually on my side.
And then one day, you know, when you don't want to kill people in wars, they turn against you.
Liz Cheney hated the concept of not going to war with everybody.
Let's kill everybody.
Let's spend a lot of money on military equipment.
You know where her father works, right?
But what she did was incredible.
Think of it.
They destroyed and deleted all of that information that went on for almost two years against Trump.
And the reason they did, because it was all false, like the person that said, I tried to strangle a Secret Service agent that's one of the toughest human beings I think I've ever seen.
I actually had a friend say, please don't change that, sir.
You are the coolest sucker in history.
Remember she said, I put my hands around his neck.
Because he wouldn't go to the Capitol.
Made-up fiction.
And I was rebuffed.
And the guy on the right is a massive weightlifter.
Probably stronger than me.
Do you think he's stronger than me, honey?
You know who I'm talking.
Possibly stronger than me.
Slightly younger than me.
Like, I won't say how many years, because I don't want to talk about that, but a lot of years.
But I had a friend that said, why are you disputing that story?
That's the coolest story I've ever heard.
That I would attack a karate champion, get slightly rebuffed, and then throw my arms around a guy with a neck about this big.
Even though there are bars.
You know, there are bars.
You can't really do that anyway.
So I wanted to talk about that.
But all of that stuff got deleted.
And the reason it got deleted is they were all caught in lies.
You know, Secret Service testified, and they said it didn't happen.
Actually, the two guys were very embarrassed.
They're suffering because their friends are saying, did Trump really do that to you?
But they gained a whole new respect for me.
But it was just make-believe stuff.
And there were a lot of make-believe stories made up.
So rather than suffer the wrath, like the story with Nancy Pelosi, I offered her 10,000 soldiers.
She knows it.
She admitted it on tape that her daughter made.
She's in.
Videographer or whatever you call her, which I'm glad she is.
Oh, she can't be in good stead with Nancy.
But Nancy said it was my responsibility as she's leaving the Capitol.
She said it was, and it was.
She's in charge of security at the Capitol.
But I offered them up to 10,000 soldiers, even more.
One time I said, more, as many as you need.
But you needed four or five hundred.
If four or five, you had 10,000.
That would be more than the number of people there, by lot.
But we offered her 10,000.
Think of it, 10,000 soldiers.
In other words, J6 wouldn't be J6. There would have been no J6. But she rebuffed them.
She didn't like it.
No, she didn't like it.
Maybe she wanted that to happen.
But she's guilty as hell.
And now we would have to go through the process because they destroyed all evidence.
They deleted everything.
There's virtually nothing left.
The other fake story and so many other fake stories.
And many people came out on our side, and those people now have got to find them.
There's nothing left.
So that's a criminal offense.
If that were a civil case, it would be a criminal offense.
If that happened civilly where you did that, it would be a criminal offense.
So I decided I'm not going to make this speech complicated.
I'm going to make it beautiful.
I'm going to make it a unifying speech.
And then when they said we have a...
A group of people that are serious Trump fans.
I said, this is the time to tell those stories.
He knows.
That's all I do.
But seriously, I'd like to...
I think it was a tremendous success.
I think we're very lucky we put it inside because it is really cool.
We just went to the helicopter out of respect.
Something that's taken place for a long time.
I guess it's as old as helicopters.
You used to get into a stagecoach.
Now you get into a helicopter.
Times change.
But it's pretty old custom.
And it's a beautiful custom, actually.
It's a beautiful custom.
I wish we could have had a better relationship.
I wish we could have had a better relationship between Republicans and Democrats.
I was with...
Senator Schumer, I said, Chuck, I think it's time we all start getting along a little bit because it doesn't make sense.
I mean, we literally never get a Democrat vote.
They never get a Republican vote, almost.
And although there is a bill coming up very shortly that we have a lot of Democrat votes, right?
It's going to be a very beautiful bill.
We're going to have it deciding, I would say, within a week or so, I think.
And it's going to be a very good bill.
You all know what I'm talking about.
I just want to thank you all for being here.
You have been our fans from day one.
Look at all these people all over.
You've been our fans.
This has been...
This has been a...
Has there ever been anything like it?
There's never been anything like it.
This has been a movement like no movement ever in history for probably any country, let alone this country.
You know, if somebody's running for president...
And if they go out and they announce they're going to Arizona, they're going to Nevada, they're going to someplace, if you have 200 or 300 people, that would be standard.
Ronald Reagan would go out.
I mean, outside of the last couple of days where people get a little excited, but even then you have a couple of thousand people.
But if you're going to go someplace, any place, any one of the swing states, any one of the other states, I mean, how about the non-swing states?
We won Alabama by 48 points.
We won Tennessee by massive numbers.
Wyoming, we won by numbers that are...
Nobody's ever seen numbers.
And, you know, places like California, we did great, but when they send out like 38 million ballots, nobody knows where the hell they're sending them, and then they come pouring back the whole thing.
You know, they passed a law in California that if you work in an election bureau, and if you so much as ask for a voter ID, if you say, sir...
Ma'am, could I please look at your voter ID? They have the right to put you in jail.
You're a criminal.
Can you believe that?
There's only one reason that happens.
They want to cheat.
So they had it where voter ID wasn't accepted.
But now if you even ask for it, this is seriously a bill that was just signed, passed in their legislature, and it was signed.
And I think when we get things cleaned up and we get back to a little bit of normalcy, I'm going to ask the Speaker to really get involved because I think we would have won the state of California because, you know, if you look at my numbers with Hispanic, we're at 56 percent.
And we were winning.
We won the Texas border that had never been won.
As the governor said, he's doing a good job, the governor, by the way, of Texas.
But as the governor said, it hasn't.
Oh, did I get lucky?
Supposing I said, you know, he's not here, but the governor of Texas has done a terrible job.
Wow!
Look at you!
You mean we couldn't get you up in the front row?
I'll tell you.
Supposing I said, J.D., the governor of Texas, he's not doing his job.
You heard what I said?
See, I didn't know you were there.
I said, he's doing...
He's doing a great job.
He's doing a phenomenal job.
But now you're going to have a partner that's going to work with you because you didn't have...
Not only didn't he have a partner, he had people selling you a wall, right?
We have a fence structure that we worked on, the governor worked on with me.
And I didn't love it, to be honest with you.
I wanted a nice precast concrete, you know, 40, 50 feet high, like a beautiful, could have been a T-shaped, Y-shaped.
I love construction.
I wanted that sucker to go up maybe 50, 60 feet.
It would have looked beautiful.
A nice Y shape.
And I said, the problem is, sir, they climbed that like a rabbit.
I said, what do you mean?
No way.
And they brought some of these guys out.
They climbed it like...
And the other thing is you hit it with acid and the thing will disintegrate.
You know, they have things for concrete.
So they needed very hardened steel, very special steel.
And then they needed 7,000 pound concrete inside that steel.
And then they have a rebar.
That's the toughest steel made.
Very hard to cut.
So this is why very little is cut.
And then they put an anti-climb panel on top.
I hated it.
I said, it's so unattractive.
And I said, why would that work?
I don't believe it works.
And I went to watch the Border Patrol, gave a display.
We had actually two sets of climbers.
The guys that climb up...
Walls with drugs on their back.
I mean, they got like 60, 70 pounds of drugs, and they go as fast as you can walk.
Or we have Mount Everest-type climbers.
And honestly, the drug guys were much better.
The drug guys blew them away, right?
But it's true.
The anti-climb panel, they couldn't get around it.
They just couldn't.
You didn't have it.
So sometimes you sacrifice beauty for efficiency.
And we did.
So we built this wall.
And we built over 500 miles of wall.
That's why we had such good numbers.
The famous chart that came down, very thankfully, the chart that came down on my right governor.
Had I not looked over there, I'm not speaking right now.
You might be speaking here.
You want to know the truth?
You, JD, have got a lot of great people in this party.
But I got very lucky.
But we had the best numbers we've ever had.
But I bought, you know, what happens is when you fill it up, it's like water.
You fill it up.
Now we have 571 miles of wall.
And they would always say, you know, when we renovated a wall, so there'd be like a piece of plywood sitting there for 60 years, or a 2x4 sitting for 60 years on the ground and rotting.
Because, you know...
And they'd say, you didn't build a new wall!
Here we're building...
50 feet up in the air, 30 feet sections, 50 foot sections, all steel, all concrete, all everything.
And all, by the way, they don't even want me to say this, but what the hell, it doesn't take them a long time.
They're all wired for all of the equipment.
We put wires in everything so they can easily wire for all the different types of equipment.
If there's a doubt, we have a wire.
Whenever we just look, you just find the wires all over the place up top, so we can just hook it up.
We don't have to...
Have wires on the outside, which wouldn't do too well, right?
So anyway, so we built an extra 200 miles of wall, and the governor wanted to buy it.
He tried to buy it, and they wouldn't sell it to him.
He wanted to put it up himself.
Could have been done in three to four weeks, 200 more miles, because when you do it now, they just keep going further out, further out, further out, getting around.
So we did an extra 200 miles, and it was all bought.
They announced that they're not going to put it up.
And that's when I realized they wanted open borders.
And that's when I realized that people are going to come pouring through the wall like nobody's ever seen before.
But you've seen it.
A lot of you are here because of that.
I made it my number one issue.
They all said inflation was the number one issue.
I said I disagree.
I think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that I know.
And I made it my number one.
I talked about inflation too, but how many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost?
I'd say it, and I'd hit it hard, but then I'd go back to the fact that we don't want criminals coming into our country.
We don't want the jails of every country in the world virtually being deposited into the United States.
And that man had to suffer with it.
And he did an unbelievable job.
I'll tell you, he was a very popular governor, but now he's like...
An unbeatable governor because of your border policies.
He was fantastic.
And he really was.
Governor Abbott, he's a great man, a great leader.
But it did make him very...
Did you do it?
You didn't do that for politics.
You did it because you wanted to do the right thing.
But I tell you, it sure as hell worked for politics, too.
It's self-preservation, that's right.
But no, because the people are demanding it.
The people of Texas are demanding it.
The people are demanding it all over.
So anyway, so we built it.
And they wouldn't let us use it.
They wouldn't let the governor use it.
And other governors, they wouldn't let him use it.
But he was the leader of the pack and did a great job.
And then we heard about a month ago that not only wouldn't they let us use it, they were going to sell it for five cents on the dollar.
Five cents on the dollar then, but today it would cost more than twice as much to build, because we bought it like six years ago.
And it was just sitting on the ground, and that does not do well for the whole thing.
But it was just sitting on the ground, and I heard about it, and I called the governor, and I called a lot of people, your attorney general.
And here's the story.
They were going to buy it, and these are great business people.
They were going to buy it for five cents on the dollar or less.
And they were calling us up, we'll sell it to you for 200 cents on the dollar.
In other words, it will cost you twice as much, so it's 200 cents on the dollar.
I said, can somebody explain that to a judge?
I mean, how corrupt is that?
You'd think they'd say, maybe we'll sell it to you for 20 cents, 30 cents, but not 200 cents.
So they were going to buy something for...
Five cents, and they were going to sell it to us for a fortune.
They were going to make it be...
They'd have it down in Fortune magazine.
They'd put it of the deal of the year, okay?
You buy something like that.
But it was so corrupt and so horrible.
And when we told that to the administration, they didn't care.
They just kept going forward.
They couldn't care less.
And they kept going forward.
They knew that they were trying to sell it back to us.
They would have sold it back to us.
You would have ended up buying it.
You would have paid probably 50, 60 cents.
Who knows?
They were going to use it for scrap metal, but then they made a much better deal.
They could just buy it and sell it to us for 15, 20 times what they paid.
20 times!
Think of it, like 20 times what they paid.
And we wouldn't let it happen.
The governor with his attorney general, Ken Paxson, they made a fantastic, good lawyer.
He's pushing around pretty good by people, right?
I said, you got a great attorney general.
They should leave him alone.
He was with me.
But Ken and the governor went to court, and a judge actually became incensed and actually called for an investigation.
How could a thing like this happen?
So he stopped it.
So we're waiting to put that wall up.
And now that you have a new president, that wall will go up so fast.
The governor will complain, sir.
This is Greg Abbott, sir.
Please, the wall is going up too fast.
Please don't do that.
You know the story about winning.
No, no.
We're going to win too much.
We're winning too much.
Please.
People always love that one.
We'll do this with the wall.
Governor Abbott calls, sir, the wall is going up too fast.
We can't take it.
We just can't take it.
No.
I think you'll be very happy if the wall goes up too fast, right?
But we'll get that due and we'll work with you on that.
But it was a great decision by a great Texas judge, right?
And it was beautiful.
Beautiful to watch.
He stopped them right in their track.
I mean, they were literally loading the stuff under trucks.
It was terrible.
Honestly, it was terrible.
And he wouldn't take it.
So I'm so glad I mentioned that they have a really good governor in Texas.
And I swear, I didn't know he was here.
I swear to you.
Sounds like a setup.
I didn't know you would end.
Did I get lucky?
I said the right thing.
Because there have been moments when I wasn't so happy with him, you know?
But not too many, I can tell you that.
So anyway, it's good to see you too, Governor.
Great.
But I just want to thank everybody.
You've been incredible.
I recognize so many of you.
It's so crazy.
But this has been a long journey.
This was a journey that started in 2015, probably started 20 years before that.
People used to say, you're going to run for president?
You're going to run, run, run?
And I always said, no, no, no.
I don't want...
And then one day I said, let's give it a shot.
And what I talked about then was the border, too.
I think it probably was the number one issue for me.
Back in 2015, 2016, I talked about the border.
And now I talked about the border, but this border is much worse.
We fixed the border.
It was totally fixed.
There was nothing to talk about.
2020, by the way, that election was totally rigged, but that's okay.
It was a rigged election.
You know the only thing good about it?
It showed how bad they are, showed how incompetent, and frankly, Historically, this is a much bigger event.
If that would have gone like it should have.
The bad thing about it is some bad things happened, like a lot of people in our country that wouldn't be in our country right now.
So, you know, that's the bad part.
But I will say that it started in 2015, and right from the beginning, we went to the top.
Day one, they announced Trump, and Trump went to number one and stayed there for the whole primary, and then we took on Hillary.
She didn't look too happy today.
We took on Hillary.
A very nice person.
But we took on Hillary and we defeated Hillary.
And then we did much better the second time in 2020. You know, we got millions more votes.
We got millions, like 10, 12 million more votes than we did the first time.
No president has ever gotten that many more votes.
I got like 9 million more than anybody else had ever gotten.
And they said we lost.
And because of that, I said to Melania, what do you think?
And she said, you want to do this again?
And had we lost, and had I thought we lost, I wouldn't do it again, because that's like the ultimate pole, right?
But I knew how well we did, and this time we made it too big to rig.
It was so big.
They tried.
They tried.
They tried like hell.
They tried.
They tried to do it.
And around 9.02, they gave up.
Last time, they did bad things.
At this time, they just said, you know, I don't know if you saw Mr. Speaker in Washington.
They had placards.
They were all set to march.
They thought it'd be closer.
A gentleman asked me, a very respected gentleman asked me yesterday, how come the polls were so wrong?
They showed you winning, but not in a landslide.
I said, because people that are true Trumpers, Are so angry at the whole polling system and at the writers, the fake news, that they don't want to talk to anybody.
So when you call somebody from Trump, who are you voting for?
They say, it's none of your business.
I'm not telling you.
And that was probably 40% of the people they called.
So they would discard that one.
And they didn't show that.
Then when the election happened, you know, the vote came, and it was much different, much higher than, we're going to win, but they thought, they really thought, they couldn't believe, the one man said, I mean, it was so much higher, we won all seven swing states.
We won the popular vote by millions of votes, which is hard for a Republican.
I'll tell you who came through.
The unions came through, the auto workers were great, the teamsters were great, the firemen were great.
I think every, almost every union was great.
The only one that weren't great, although, Sean, Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters, was fantastic.
But generally speaking, the head of the union was against Trump, but the union would be with us for like 80%, 85%.
Look what we did with the auto workers in Michigan.
Look what we did with the Teamsters.
The Teamsters were unbelievable.
They were a solid Democrat vote, and they voted for Trump.
So we had a great experience.
This has been, now we have to go to work and get it done because we have to do something that's going to be great.
We're going to turn our country around.
And we're going to turn it around fast.
And I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs, okay?
I think this was better, J.D. I think this was much better.
And I got to see my friend.
So, Governor, take care of yourself.
You call me.
We'll start working.
You know what that means with him.
He's going to be calling me tomorrow morning at about 6. And I said, how about next week?
You call me, and we're going to get it started real fast.
We'll really help you a lot.
You've done a fantastic job protecting something which is not supposed to be for the states.
And amazing job you've done.
Thank you very much.
And I want to thank everybody.
And I have a first lady who's been incredible I shouldn't say this I'm going to get hell when I say this, but her feet are absolutely aching.
You know, those heels.
And we thought we were leaving.
We were going home.
Sir, would you be able to go down and say hello to some of your other fans that are here?
I said, oh, I didn't know that.
Well, did you get to see pretty clearly the picture, I hope?
That's good.
Because you wouldn't want to make the same speech again, right?
But she said, darling, I love you so much, but my feet are killing me.
I said, honey, let me just see how far it is.
I asked the person, oh, not that long, maybe four or five hundred yards.
That's five football fields.
I said, can you make it?
She said, we're going to make it no matter what.
We're going to make it because we have to go.
Right?
Right?
And then we went out to the helicopter, though, just prior to this, and said goodbye, and said, And the wind is blowing like crazy.
And with the hat that she's wearing, she almost blew away.
We almost lost off her.
She was being elevated off the ground.
She almost blew away.
So we all appreciate it because you've been a great First Lady.
A beautiful and a great First Lady.
And they love our First Lady.
You know, JD, whenever I make a speech, I see hundreds of times, we love our first lady.
And they do.
And they should.
She's great.
So I just want to thank you.
Thank you very much.
I just want to thank everybody.
And I felt that I said to JD, should we give him the A treatment, the B treatment, the C, the D, or the F? You know what the F is?
Hello, everybody.
Thank you for being here.
Bye-bye.
I gave you the A-plus treatment.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
Thank you, Governor.
Thank you all very much.
- Appreciate it. - There's just never been anybody like this guy.
The President of the United States giving a second inaugural address.
Off the cuff in the overflow room for people who didn't make it into the inaugural, into the Capitol Rotunda for the inauguration, which included governors and, I don't know about legislators, but many other dignitaries.
The speech started sort of like the interview with the quarterback after the game.
Yes, it was a post-game interview.
Post-game interview.
And then turned into praise for...
I think all of human history.
Yes, but very personally aimed at Governor Abbott of Texas.
And then very funny remarks about First Lady.
Melania Trump.
My favorite part was him making fun of his wife's hat.
That is dangerous.
That is what people love, though.
The fact that not only was it inside baseball on the post-game interview, what did you guys think about this if the thing upstairs...
But then even he did a post...
That speech.
Speech.
And this speech, I didn't know what I was going to give you, okay?
A, B, C, D, F. You know what?
I gave you all the A-plus treatment.
Bye.
So we're going to talk about the media's reaction to the president's first speech, which is already starting to happen, and you will not be surprised to hear that they aren't very happy.
Truly a unique inauguration.
And it was, in a way, I mean, as the media is saying, it was a divisive speech, and it was somewhat divisive for an inaugural address.
One interesting thing about having a non-consecutive second term is that you have a president who does have a grievance.
He's coming into his second term not fresh off of his first, but having been, he believes, unjustly defeated in the election.
I think we all agree unjustly persecuted and even prosecuted by the government since the time of his presidency.
And so he threw some jabs.
Yeah, I think that, you know...
Not to steal Michael's shtick of citing annoying philosophers, but the Hegelian synthesis never takes place here, right?
So normally you say there's thesis, antithesis, synthesis, right?
You have like one thing and then it's opposite and then they come together in the third thing.
Well, what if it just went thesis, antithesis, thesis?
Because that's what we just did with the presidency and I think that's the thing that President Trump is saying.
I think what he's saying is, listen, my ideas won.
My ideas won, right?
You tried my ideas, and then you tried the opposite ideas, and then my ideas won.
And so, why would I stand up here and pretend that there's some sort of coming together around the ideas that lost to me?
You tried it.
You tried it.
You got to see both sides, and then you guys decided, with all the bad things on the table, it wasn't as though anything was hidden in this election cycle.
We had everything, right?
We had a full airing of grievances about January 6th, and we had a full airing of grievances about COVID, and now about BLM, and about...
Trans and all that stuff.
And you chose me.
And because you chose me, now I get to say the thing, which is, I won.
This is not an experiment.
I won.
So here's what I'm going to do now that I won.
And all the things that were bad that you hated.
And I think that there was a tacit acknowledgement by President Trump that one of the reasons he's back is because Joe Biden.
It is because Joe Biden.
I mean, my heart soared a couple of times today.
One was when President Trump actually took the oath of office and Joe Biden was no longer president.
And the other was when we all personally saw the helicopter take off.
When the helicopter took off, A load was lightened from my heart.
And suddenly, like, really?
Because every day you woke up in Joe Biden's America and it was like, what bad thing is this terrible person going to do to the country today?
Literally 15 minutes before he ceased to be the president, he pardoned his entire immediate family, which is one of the most corrupt and now precedent-setting events that we've witnessed in our lifetime.
In 2020, he literally said...
You should not do this.
He said because there was talk that Trump was going to do this on his way out of office.
And Biden was like, you can't do that.
That's terrible.
And norms defying.
And now he uses Trump as an excuse to pardon his entire family.
Well, I mean, here's the thing.
Once you do that, then you have now, you've basically excused all criminality by all first families for the rest of time.
This will now be de rigore.
This goes back to the divisiveness of the speech.
You know, Barack Obama...
The great deceiver once deceived Americans by saying, mostly we fight over the 50 yard line.
That was true until Barack Obama.
It's not like he's taking over from somebody who increased the welfare state a little bit or, you know, had some programs that we didn't like or something like that.
He's talking about people who are actually not just, and not just corrupt, but oppressive, anti-American.
We're teaching our children anti-Americanism.
There's no reason to include them.
And the fact, you know, we were sitting around thinking, saying, oh, the New York Times just said, what a dark picture he painted of America.
I'm thinking, nobody cares what you say.
Nobody cares what you say.
Darker for you, I guess.
Do not represent the people.
And the thing about the pardons, The precedent that it sets for such a frivolous reason, because it's not even as though, and we all know this, and Biden knows this, Trump was not going to go after any of these people.
He wasn't going to go after the Biden family.
It was not going to happen in a million years.
The only reason Biden's doing it is just as a last little political stunt to try to make it seem as though Trump is this vengeful dictator who is going to try to put his whole family in prison.
I'm not sure about that.
I think he did it because he had to do it because he had pardoned Hunter.
I think he pardoned Hunter.
And then all of his other kids were like, well, now they're going to come after me.
There is this weakness that...
But Liz Cheney, Fauci, I mean...
Mark Milley?
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
No, that's a valid...
I do think that he has built up.
Biden's...
He had to have some sort of world-shaking excuse for why he wanted to run again.
Because the tacit bargain of his election in 2020 was that he was only going to serve one term.
I mean, he almost said it.
Clearly, during the campaign.
And then he basically changed his mind in 2022. He said I'm a transitional president.
Correct.
And then in 2022, he changed his mind and he decided he was going to run again.
So the question became, what is the thing that is motivating you to run again?
And he basically said, it's that the tyranny that Donald Trump is going to bring upon the world is the reason I must run again.
And so he can't let go of that idea.
He can't let go of it.
Because the minute he lets go of it, then it really defies why he supposedly ran in the second place, right?
And so he has to keep maintaining that myth.
I think...
People can't handle cognitive dissonance, and Biden is no exception to this.
And so he had to just keep maintaining the facade that if he had not pardoned everyone in a 300-mile radius, then Donald Trump was going to go after everyone.
By the way, Anthony Fauci actively suppressed, actively used the power of government to suppress actually good information being put out by the very guy who's going to end up leading the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya.
The people he's pardoning did terrible, terrible things.
They really did.
And if he says that he trusts the legal system...
Which he clearly does not.
And he wouldn't have done this.
That's right.
It exposes the whole fraud of what he was and what the system is.
It also, by these blanket pardons for crimes, no one's even been accused of a crime.
I mean, there's no investigation into Fauci.
No charges have been brought against Fauci.
When you pardon someone for a hypothetical crime, you are removing the power of the people to have any transparency into their government, to have any justice within their government.
- The Constitution says he can pardon people who have committed offenses against the federal government and the archivist says that that means you have to have committed a crime to get a pardon. - Does the Nixon precedent though Ameliorate that somewhat.
Nixon hadn't been charged.
That is the one exception, I think.
Jimmy Carter pardoned all the draft dodgers, even those who hadn't been prosecuted.
But it was a narrow pardon.
It was not a blanket pardon.
Yes, he pardoned them for dodging the draft.
He didn't say anything that you may have done heretofore has now been pardoned.
It's crazy.
I mean, it's the letter from the Three Musketeers, right?
The bearer has done what has been done, right?
It's an insane thing to blanket pardon Hunter, especially because, I mean, for all I know, Hunter may have, you know, committed the arson in Los Angeles given the fact that allegedly, you know, all of his paintings were insured.
That's a joke, guys.
It's not real.
200 paintings.
Today.
Who's the insurance company on that?
So, a few months ago, that was about $50 billion in art value.
And today, I think it's worth less than a canvas they were painted on.
What was it?
Nero said, what an artist the world loses to me.
That's, I think, Hunter Vodian.
And Fauci probably is complicit in one of the great crimes in human history, is the truth.
I mean, it's easy to blame the Chinese because the virus came out of China.
Fauci was almost certainly financing that.
He was demonstrably financing the type of research that was involved in the release of COVID. Honestly, even if you put that stuff aside, the thing that Fauci did to shut down any possible dissemination of information or alternative points of view in regards to shutting down the entirety of the country, that's the part that to me is, if not borderline criminal, actually criminal.
That is a wild thing that happened.
You can kind of feel the stain of the last four years washing away.
It's going to be...
It will be fascinating to kind of think what the legacy of Joe Biden will be 10 years from now.
I think we all forgot he was president.
For example, we forgot he was president the day that the election was over.
That's right.
The entire world treated Donald Trump like he was president.
Joe Biden was an afterthought.
I mean, there were deals happening in the Middle East, and Joe Biden just wasn't even a part of that.
I think it goes beyond that.
People stopped treating Joe Biden as the president the moment Kamala Harris announced for the president.
He disappeared off the stage of history.
You heard Mike Johnson's story about the fact that he didn't even know what executive order he'd signed.
It's a truly terrifying account.
And from a very credible source.
And none of the press corps has bothered to try to find out who's running the country.
Biden did an interview, I forget what publication, maybe a month ago, where he was asked in the interview...
Well, could you have even served another four years?
And his answer in that interview was, well, who knows?
No one knows the future.
So finally he admits that, you know, long after the fact.
One of the things I think that we should do, and here I'm going to tout a Jeremy Boring original idea.
This is an idea that I have to tout it to congressional leadership as well.
What Democrats have demonstrated over the course of the last four years, if you didn't already know it under Barack Obama, is they do not care about the institutions, laws, and rules of the United States.
They do not care about them at all, at all.
And so what Jeremy has proposed, and I think it's quite a good idea, is that one of the key institutions that's upholding the capacity of the United States to function is the filibuster in the Senate.
And we know for a fact that the Democrats were going to nuke that filibuster if they got a hold of the Senate, the presidency.
They were going to do it.
And so what Jeremy has proposed, and if you want to lay it out, you can, I'm going to do it faster.
So, in any case, the basic idea that Jeremy proposed, which is a good one, is that the Republicans in the Senate should propose a constitutional amendment to enshrine the Senate filibuster in the Constitution, and if it's not cleared in 18 months, they should nuke it.
Meaning that either we're all on board or we're not on board.
Do we want to preserve our norms?
Then let's do it.
If not, we're not just going to wait for you to be the one.
Because guaranteed, the next time the Democrats have power, they're going to kill it.
By saying that if we don't do it, the Republicans will, which is exactly the shtick.
Always this is the shtick.
But nature is beginning to heal.
The sun is out.
The sun is shining.
The birds are tweeting.
It's like the end of a Disney movie.
It truly is.
The old Disney movie.
It is actually true that in the moment that President Trump gave his acceptance speech in 2016, it began to rain.
And as soon as he started giving a speech today, the scent came out.
God's writing is like getting more on the nose.
It is a great day for the country.
And one of the things that's important to me is that people remember you're not going to get everything you want.
Every president is a mixed bag.
Donald Trump will be a mixed bag.
You're going to get things that you want.
You're going to get things that you don't want.
There's going to be disappointments.
There's going to be failures.
There's going to be unforeseen challenges.
But you know who would not have been a mixed bag?
Kamala Harris.
She just would have been the bag.
And just in winning, Donald Trump has changed the course of our nation's history.
And so when the challenges come that are in front of us, when the disappointments come in front of us, when he does things that don't feel like what you thought you were supporting, when we get policy that won't be as good on...
Free economics is what Ben and I would like.
Or when he has to kill some people overseas and Tucker Carlson gets apoplectic.
Because only our enemies say that we should kill people overseas.
Or whatever bullshit happens.
Just know that we do live in a better world than the world we would have lived in had this not happened.
And that's not to say that Trump isn't going to do great things.
I think he is.
I think the beauty of a non-consecutive term is that he comes in empowered.
It's not a stay the course.
Ben, your point is great.
He doesn't just have a popular mandate because he won the popular vote.
He has a popular mandate because a stark choice was given to people in the timeline and they chose Trump's policies.
And so I think he's going to have a very energetic second term.
But whatever the outcome of it is, it is a far, far better day today than it would have been if we were swearing in either a second term of Joe Biden or a first term of Kamala Harris.
The next four years are ours.
All of the opportunity is on our side if we will just seize it.
So let's seize it.
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