My 5 takeaways from Donald Trump's inauguration speech

Well, that was something.

Here’s the thing about Donald Trump: He isn’t going to change. Not ever.

That message came through loud and clear during his inaugural address on Monday as he castigated his political rivals, painted himself in messianic terms and recited a laundry list of actions he will take in the first hours of his presidency.

It was the exact sort of speech I expected from Trump because it is the only speech he is capable of delivering.

Below, my 5 big takeaways from the address. (NOTE: I will go through the speech line by line, of course. Look for that to post tomorrow AM.)

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1. It was (basically) a campaign speech

If you’ve ever watched one of Trump’s speeches on the campaign trail, you likely recognized a fair amount of the rhetoric in today’s address.

Amazingly, Trump wedged the fact that he had won all 7 swing states and carried the popular vote by “millions” (he won by a little over two million) into this speech.

Has there ever been an inaugural speech in modern political history where the president touted his margins in the previous election? I can’t imagine there has been.

There were also passages of this speech that were directly lifted from Trump’s stump speech. We heard about the criminals and people from mental institutions pouring over our southern border. About the “vicious, violent politicization” of the Department of Justice. About “drill baby drill.”

Again, Trump has one speed. One setting. Candidate Trump and President Trump are one in the same.

2. He gave the Biden Administration the 🖕

Normally in an inauguration speech, the new president finds something nice to say about the man he is replacing. A grace note.

There was NONE of that in Trump’s address.

Instead, he savaged Joe Biden — and cast a very dark and grim picture of the America he has been elected to lead.

He bashed the “horrible betrayals” of the Biden administration. He pledged that “America’s decline is over.” Much as he did on the campaign trail over the past year, Trump cast America as in dire straits — saved only by its decision to elect him. (He promised “the four greatest years in American history” toward the end of the speech.)

Through it all, Biden sat — just feet from Trump! — with a bemused smile on his face. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was stone-faced.

It was, in a word, awkward. Which I think is exactly how Trump intended it to be.

3. Me and the Messiah

The one line that struck me most from Trump’s speech was this one: “I was saved to make America Great Again.”

While Trump had hinted at that sentiment following the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania over the summer, he had never explicitly embraced the notion that he was on some sort of mission from God before.

(Sidenote: Trump wasn’t the only one to invoke this sent-from-God rhetoric. In his invocation before the swearing-in, Franklin Graham expressly said that Trump’s life had been spared by God so that he could be president again.)

While Trump didn’t make any other messiah-like references during his speech, the entire address was peppered with “I” statements. It was 85% about him — how he had been persecuted by the past administration, how people said he couldn’t win, all the things he was going to do as president — and very, very little about the American people.

4. “State of the Union” vibes

Yes, it felt like a campaign speech — especially at the start. But then, weirdly, it morphed into a SOTU speech, a laundry list of all the things Trump was going to do in office.

There was even the typical SOTU standing ovations from Trump supporters while Biden and Harris sat on their hands and stared into space!

Did anyone else find it strange that Trump decided to put his plan to change the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” into his inauguration address? Or that he spent 3 minutes on how the Panama Canal is a rip-off and we need to take it back?

Usually inaugural speeches are all about soaring rhetoric focused on what it means to be an American and how we are the most unique nation on earth. While Trump did some of that at the tail end of the speech (more on that below), this was mostly a workman-like speech dedicated to listing a bunch of executive orders he was going to issue — which we already knew about because his people had leaked them to the press!

Just strange.

5. Trump is no orator

You could tell the parts of the speech that Trump really believed and cared about and the parts where he was just reading off the Teleprompter.

Talking about closing the border. Drill baby drill. How he had been a victim of lawfare. In all of those moments, Trump was his usual self — preening, pointing and relishing the moment.

When the speech called for, well, bigger rhetoric, Trump couldn’t fake his lack of engagement. He read through the stuff some speechwriter wrote for him with the trademark woodenness and lack of interest that anyone who has seen him try to stick to the prompter recognizes.

Trump is a gifted performer. But he is no orator. He is never going to inspire with his words. That was driven home bluntly in his speech today.