Source: Patriot Post | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
“The golden age of America begins right now.” So began President Donald Trump in his inaugural address yesterday. With that remark, he plunged right into a forward-looking agenda that contrasts with where things stand. He exuded the confidence of a man who knew he was supposed to be there and that his agenda is the right and necessary path. Let’s hope it is because it’s full steam ahead.
Trump also wasted no time putting Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and their fellow travelers in their place. His second paragraph:
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.
Obviously, those things were not true for the last four years. He wasn’t done eviscerating his predecessor:
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 catalog of catastrophic events abroad.
It fails to protect our magnificent law-abiding American citizens but provides 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 being 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 were watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense. …
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.
He closed that section by declaring, “For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day.”
I quote such a large swath of the speech because he so thoroughly rebuked the doddering old fool and his sidekick to his left. The radical leftism Biden and Harris pushed for four long years totally wreaked havoc on our nation, and Trump knows how large a task undoing it has become.
Indeed, after his speech yesterday, he punctuated the day’s festivities by signing 42 executive orders, 115 personal actions, and more than 200 executive actions, often aimed at rectifying specific wrongs or injustices Biden perpetrated.
In a way, it was immensely satisfying that Biden, Harris, and the rest had to sit there and hear Trump’s assessment of the job they did.
That said, I noted that Trump’s tie was an interesting blend of red and blue, giving the effect of purple. To me, that was an unmistakable message: Trump will undo a lot of blue damage, but he wants blue voters to know that he’s not just a red sledgehammer. He pivoted from his opening to reaching out to “citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.” He specifically thanked “the black and Hispanic communities,” observing, “Today is Martin Luther King Day,” and promising, “We will strive together to make his dream a reality.”
“National unity is now returning to America,” he added.
Trump has never lacked confidence, but this address showed that he is far more prepared to tackle the challenges our nation faces than he was the first time. Despite the initial apprehensions of millions of Americans, myself included, his first term was largely a tremendous success. That happened in large part because great people stepped into key roles and informed his agenda.
This time, he seems to be approaching things differently. He’s less interested in a conservative to-do list than in a broader agenda. That isn’t to say the conservative agenda lacks breadth or that it isn’t still desirable, but Trump’s team is more ideologically diverse, and his goal is to build a more expansive coalition that he didn’t have the first time.
Like his first term, his goal is to govern the way he campaigned. In some ways, that will look different this time, not least because he’s notably more popular now than he was in 2017, which may make lasting achievements via legislation more attainable.
His inaugural message was clear: There’s a lot of work to be done, and it began in the speech itself.
