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Inauguration Day: Today marks the end of the transition and Trump's inauguration. What to expect from his first official speech as President

All eyes on Inauguration Day and Donald Trump's official return to the White House. His speech will give an idea of ​​what Trump 2.0 will be like

Inauguration Day: Today marks the end of the transition and Trump's inauguration. What to expect from his first official speech as President

At noon today (18pm in Italy), January 20 (opening day), Donald Trump to be sworn in including forty-seventh president of the United States and will formally take office. His administration will thus officially begin and the transition period of power, which began on November 6, which this year has caused many institutional paradoxes, will end.

The conclusion of the transition

Originally, the transition was much longer, why the the new president took office on March 4The period came almost halved by the 20th Amendment, approved in 1933 and entered into force in 1937, as the worsening of the economic crisis, which had begun in 1929, during the winter of 1933 was blamed on the refusal of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, to define common initiatives for the recovery with the tenant of the White House now at the end of his mandate, Republican Herbert Hoover. However, regardless of the duration of the transition, according to the Constitution, the outgoing president remains chief executive in all respects and retains the fullness of its functions until his successor takes office.

For example, in the past, in this interregnum phase only apparently between one administration and another, John Adams appointed John Marshall as Chief Justice in 1801; John Tyler signed the Texas annexation bill in 1845; Dwight D. Eisenhower broke relations with Cuba in 1961 and authorized the CIA to train anti-Castro forces in Guatemala; George HW Bush deployed a contingent of 28.000 troops to Somalia in December 1992 as part of the United Nations Operation Restore Hope to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid from the international community to the civilian population and, a week before the end of his mandate, on 13 January 1993, launched a military retaliation against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. This time, however, things went differently.

In recent days Joe Biden has issued some decrees to preemptively thwart some of Trump's promised policies: he banned new oil drilling off federal waters; he extended for eighteen months the suspension of deportation for about 900.000 migrants from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela; he removed Cuba from the list of "state sponsors of terrorism". However, for all or almost all, it was as if Trump had already replaced Biden on November 6th of last year. So, for example, ignoring the president still in office, they went to The Donald's mansion at Mar-a-Lago the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, already at the end of November, to discuss trade policies and protectionist duties with Trump and, more recently, the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to deal with the tycoon the complex intertwining of the cases of Mohammad Abedini and Cecilia Sala.

Furthermore, albeit in synergy with Biden's envoy, Brett McGurk, Trump conducted a negotiation with Benjamin Netanyahu on Gaza through his own representative for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, in parallel with the official one of the Democratic president still in office. So much so that, half-jokingly, a journalist even asked Biden if theceasefire agreement, announced last Wednesday, whether it was his or Trump's merit, although the text largely reflects the proposal put forward by the White House last spring.

Between rhetoric and substance

After swearing allegiance to the Federal Constitution, Trump to give speech, according to a tradition inaugurated by the first president, George Washington, way back in 1789. It will be the occasion to present the objectives of the his second presidency and his vision for America, as per established practice.

For example, in 1977, the Democrat Jimmy Carter, who entered the White House at a time when the United States had been discredited by its military involvement in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, used the speech to declare that his administration would focus its foreign policy from anti-communism to the defense and promotion of human rights on a global scale.

Instead, in 1981, his successor, the Republican Ronald Reagan, anticipated the desire to proceed with a radical downsizing of the welfare state. However, the intention to arrive at a "minimal" government was dammed by the defeat of the Republican Party in the subsequent midterm elections of 1982 and above all by the awareness that the cuts to Social Security and health care for the elderly would have jeopardized Reagan's re-election in 1984. Therefore, Reagan limited himself to reducing the amount of appropriations to finance the welfare state, without eliminating its supporting structure. In retrospect, the most famous passage of what he said when he took office in 1981 - "government is not the solution to our problems. The government is the problem” – seemed to sound like a mere rhetorical statement. This last dimension is another common aspect of inaugural speeches.

For example, in 1933 the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt he wanted to reassure Americans who were terrified of going broke because of the economic depression with a wave of optimism, more psychological than substantial: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The presidency of his predecessor, during which American society had been overwhelmed by the Wall Street crash of 1929, had paradoxically begun with Hoover's assertion that he had "no fear for the future of our country. It shines with hope." In 1961, another Democrat, John F. Kennedy, extolled the civic sense of Americans: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country."

Overcoming the contrasts

In the past, the president's inauguration address has also been theoccasione to heal the Election campaign lacerations previous and to reunite the country in the name of common national interests. It was like this almost from the birth of the United States.

"We have called by different names those who are brothers in the same principle. We are all republicans. We are all federalists." Thus expressed the democratic-republican Thomas Jefferson, upon taking office on March 4, 1801. Yet his Federalist opponent, the outgoing president John Adams, had refused to attend the inauguration ceremony and, during the electoral campaign in which he was defeated, had accused him of being an atheist, a libertine and a half-breed, the son of a Native American and an African-American mulatto, the latter a particularly defamatory accusation in a society where slavery was still legal.

More than half a century later, in 1865, the Republican Abraham Lincoln reiterated Jefferson's approach, after internal conflicts had even degenerated into a civil war that had been going on for almost four years, and he committed himself to the Confederates, against whom the fighting was still ongoing, to guarantee a national reconciliation "with malice towards no one, with charity for all" in the name of the need to "heal the wounds of the country".

Even in 1989, despite a no-holds-barred electoral battle, the Republican George H.W. Bush declared that he was "reaching out" to Democratic leaders to rise above party divisions and "work together" to re-establish collaboration between political forces. Even the Republican Richard M. Nixon, who had not spared low blows in the 1968 election campaign and had eyed the vote of racist whites in the South, in 1969 expounded on the essential need to make American society cohesive, overcoming segregation, discrimination and social injustice.

Trump's Break with the Past

This tradition has been lost with Trump.. In 2017 The Donald just said thank you the outgoing president, Democrat Barack Obama, and his wife Michelle, for the help they had given him during the transition between the two administrations, and to note that all Americans had the red blood of patriots, regardless of the region in which they were born and the color of their skin. Overall, however, his words overflowed into an aggressive oratory that was more suited to a rally than an institutional event. In particular, Trump lashed out against the leadership of both parties who, in his opinion, had entrenched themselves in Washington in defense of their privileges, while the population was in unemployment and poverty and the cities were threatened by criminal gangs and the spread of drugs with America reduced to the theater of a "carnage".

The Donald, therefore, did not take off the candidate's clothes to wear the statesman's robe and continued to express himself with the incendiary language that had characterized his speeches at his supporters' rallies and that would also characterize his first presidency. It is no coincidence that his speech ended with an explicit reference to the slogan "Make America Great Again" of the recently concluded electoral campaign: "together we will make America great again".

A revisit of his 2017 inaugural address?

In the last election campaign, after the attack on Butler, in Pennsylvania, on July 13, Trump resorted to more conciliatory tones than in the past in his speeches, abandoning the personal attacks against Biden, whom he had previously called “the worst president in history.” He even changed some passages of the speech he gave at the Republican convention in Milwaukee that, five days later, gave him the nomination for the White House, in order to tone down the most polemical tones and appear more inclusive. For example, he inserted a statement that referred to cohesion: “as Americans, we are bound by a single and common destiny. Either we rise together or we fall.” It was, however, a brief moment, favored by the inconsistency of Biden's candidacy, plummeted in the polls after the embarrassing televised debate with the tycoon June 27. The president's withdrawal from the race for the White House and his replacement with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate brought back the aggressive language to which Trump has accustomed us.

Trump will not be able to run for president again in 2028 due to the constitutional limit of the 1951nd amendment which, since XNUMX, has not allowed anyone to serve more than two terms in the White House, regardless of whether they are consecutive or not. Unlike January 20, 2017, Trump will not have to prepare the ground for another election campaign for which verbal attacks have always been a tool against his opponents. Someone could, therefore, expect a more presidential and less polemical speech compared to eight years ago, also in light of the observation that the electoral success of 5 November 2024 was clearer thanks to the conquest of the relative majority of the popular vote.

Pose to president of all Americans and not only as a leader of his supporters would be more necessary than ever in a historical moment in which, despite Trump's triumphalism on the night of November 5, American society remains divided into two opposing halves, numerically almost equivalent. This was confirmed by the margin of advantage contained in the popular vote obtained by Trump in the presidential elections: 49,9% compared to 48,4% for Harris. However, as demonstrated by the Senate hearings for the Confirmation of Pete Hegseth's nomination to the Pentagon, on which even some Republican members have expressed doubts, the path of the Trump administration is anything but downhill.

The Special Prosecutor's Report Jack smith on the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 has reignited the debate over Trump's subversive behavior and authoritarian tendencies. Smith, in fact, argued that there would have been sufficient evidence to find The Donald guilty of having incited his supporters to storm the Congress building, although the case was shelved following the re-election of tycoon. It cannot, therefore, be excluded that Trump to exploit inauguration speech again to launch his arrows against the Democratic Party, even though this political force has fallen into a strong identity crisis after Harris' defeat, against the so-called deep state (the senior federal bureaucrats who allegedly prevented him from implementing his program during his first term) and against the RINOs (the acronym for Republicans in name only, that is, Republicans in name only). But you can never tell. Trump has always amazed with its unpredictability. The tone of his speech will, however, be indicative of the attitude that The Donald will want to adopt during his second presidency.

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