A felon in the Oval Office
For the third time since it was designated a national holiday in 1983, MLK Day and the presidential inauguration arrived simultaneously. It occurred the first time on Bill Clinton’s second inauguration and the second inauguration of Barack Obama. This convergence gave Trump an opportunity to invoke Dr. King, who would have probably gone unmentioned except during Cardinal Dolan’s invocation.
“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,” Trump promised on Monday from the Capitol Building’s Rotunda, amid a raft of outlandish charges and his announcement that the “Golden Age” has arrived.
Ordinarily, an inauguration address is not a State of the Union speech, but nothing is off limits when Trump takes the mic. He wasn’t out of the first paragraph or two before he began the politicization of his remarks, noting, “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.”
Much of what Trump said was nothing more than overworked rhetoric from his campaigns, especially to “make America great again.” Knowing of his tendency to take advantage of successes not his own, it was good that the ceasefire in Israel and Gaza happened before he was sworn in. “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,” he said.
On the global front, only the Panama Canal got more than a nod, and China got its only mention as a user of the canal. This gave him an opportunity to chastise the recently deceased Jimmy Carter for his sale of the conduit. There were bemused expressions on the face of several Democrats when Trump said, “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.”
A few people exchanged looks of bafflement when Trump said, “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.”
Of the religious speakers, none was more ostentatious than Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, pastor of the 180 Church in Detroit, who was largely responsible for delivering the Black vote for Trump in Detroit. He did his best to climb Dr. King’s mountaintop sermon, with his “Let it ring” repetitions.
After the swearing-in ceremony, Trump spoke to his supporters in the Capitol Building’s Emancipation Hall. That was interrupted if you were watching it on CNN, in the same way the MLK celebration from the King Center in Atlanta, aired on Fox 5, ended. At least of the major outlets did deliver a portion of Rev. Dr. William Barber’s speech.
As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared, after stating that she would not attend the inauguration of “a rapist,” Trump’s authoritarian reign is underway.
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