For those with a dark sense of humor, President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech was weirdly and wildly hilarious.
It was filled with a ridiculous bloat of lies and exaggerations, like Trump’s bogus claims that China now runs the Panama Canal, that former President Joe Biden has left him a country that is deep in economic and geopolitical decline, and that his return to power will end some imagined regime of government censorship of free speech and political persecution.
Laughably, Trump promised to “drill, baby, drill,” as if the United States were not already at maximum capacity for oil production. He also pledged to send American troops to the Mexican border to stop an invasion of illegal migrants that does not actually exist, given that the number of border crossings is currently at about the same level as it was during his first presidential term.
Even more amusing were the new president’s promises to take care of two issues that have, hitherto, not been detected on the radar of American voters: renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and reverting the name of Alaska’s biggest peak from Denali to McKinley. Totally disconnected from reality was his stated intention to tax foreign countries, possibly through some imagined “external revenue service.” If the United States had the ability to tax other countries, some other president would have done it long ago.
Trump’s self-congratulatory boasts about what his return to the White House would mean for the nation were especially over-the-top. He dubbed the day of his inauguration as “a day of liberation.” He declared that “our golden age has just begun” and that “we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.” His assertion that he seeks to be “a peacemaker and a unifier” was a real knee slapper.
Trump made one claim that was singular, something never stated by any past president. Alluding to the assassin’s bullet that nicked his ear during the presidential campaign, Trump said, “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
So, Trump now claims to be ordained by the Almighty. The various clergymen who delivered prayers during the inaugural ceremony appeared to agree, particularly the Rev. Franklin Graham, whose gushing words about Trump bordered on idolatry, and the Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, who nearly levitated as he shouted out his belief that, with Trump’s return to power, “America would begin to dream again.”
The entire inauguration extravaganza — from Melania Trump’s hat to Elon Musk’s straight-arm salute — could be viewed as a grand political satire if it did not portend such tragic consequences. The grim reality of what is in store became starkly clear when, as one of his first acts, Trump issued pardons and commuted sentences for virtually all the Jan. 6 rioters who have been brought to justice over the last four years for their assault on Congress, the Capitol police and American democracy.
Perhaps that only proves that God’s Chosen One is a forgiving guy — at least when it comes to the paramilitary goons who may prove useful to him in the contentious days to come.
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