President-elect Donald J. Trump, one of the most polarizing figures in newfangled political history, will deliver his second presidential inaugural address on Capitol Hill on Monday on a brutally cool day, but he is expected to strike a warmer tone than eight years ago.
During Trump’s recent inauguration, protesters filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and Democrat-controlled cities across the country. Democratic House members boycotted, and the national mood was partly jubilant and partly shocked.
This time, he will take the oath of office not as a random outsider, but as a political force and winner of the popular vote, after spectacular victories in Pennsylvania and all other swing states. Trump’s promises about what he will do on day one are bolder, but resistance to him, muted by the reality of a national shift to the right, is much weaker – at least for now.
“This was truly a hopeful election,” said Republican Dan Meuser (D-Pa.), a Trump ally from northeastern Pennsylvania whose office received more than 2,000 ticket requests, many of them from Pennsylvanians who worked on the campaign in the state. “They chose change and now they can see it.”
Trump will be 78, the same age as Joe Biden was when he began his term in 2021, the oldest president to take office. Getting into the Oval Office comes after an unprecedented felony conviction in a New York hush money trial and surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump, the only president to be impeached twice, will return to office just four years after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Thousands of Pennsylvanians come to Washington to see it. Some have VIP seats and tickets to balls, others arrive by bus with plans to attend a rally at Capital One Arena on Sunday and a parade that was moved there due to cool weather on Monday. Butler EMTs who responded to the attempted assassination of Trump are scheduled to take part in the parade along with a horse named Trump from Tunkhannock.
Many of the same Trump supporters from Pennsylvania who were at Butler’s rally in July will gather at the Capitol. The same will apply to some of the January 6 defendants who were granted permission to watch Trump take the oath of office in the same building they breached in January 2021.
Across Pennsylvania, a state that has captured the nation’s political attention for more than a year, Trump supporters will rally at Bucks County Athletic Club, Irish pub in Grays Ferryand on couches and on cellphones across the Commonwealth to see the culmination of the four-year battle to return Trump to the White House.
“I personally think this election was kind of monumental,” said Logan Dubil, a 23-year-old Republican from Lansdowne who got tickets to the inauguration through his congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (R-Montgomery). A former Trump campaign volunteer is heading to Sunday’s rally and inauguration with her college friends.
“I’m hopeful, knowing that many more people are optimistic about the next four years,” he said. I hope he doesn’t get that much of a backlash because we really need him to succeed. We should all be rooting for this.”
Trump enters the White House with his own According to CNN, his highest favorability rating has been since just after his victory in 2016. However, according to a CNN poll released on Thursday, Americans are still divided on the recent president – 46% have a favorable opinion compared to 48% who view Trump unfavorably.
And Democrats, though somewhat muted in their opposition, are preparing for a day that will begin a series of battles in Washington.
“There’s obviously some concern as his allies talk about the number of executive orders they’re going to execute and the sweeping policy changes they want to implement,” said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat whose district includes parts of South Philadelphia and suburban Delaware County . Instead of attending the inauguration, Scanlon will be volunteering in Philadelphia on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
— What’s happening to them?
The orders Trump promised to sign on Monday could impact the lives of thousands of Pennsylvanians. He promised sweeping action on day one, including pardons for Jan. 6 defendants, restrictions on transgender Americans and sweeping immigration enforcement orders.
“We have a lot of families in this region where citizens and foreigners live under the same roof, and some of those foreigners may be expecting help but haven’t received it yet,” Scanlon said. “So what happens to them?”
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (R-Pa.) last week joined 47 other Democrats to vote for a GOP-led immigration bill that would target undocumented immigrants arrested for crimes, including theft or shoplifting, for deportation.
Boyle, who did not attend Trump’s inauguration in 2017, was unsure whether he would attend this time due to confusion over the ceremony being moved to a much smaller rotunda. Boyle said in a statement that he is “always willing to work with people, regardless of party, if we can find common ground… but at the same time, I will not hesitate to fight this administration whenever it tries to do destructive things.”
Activists took a slightly different tack than in 2017, when Trump first took office. While protests are planned for Monday in Philadelphia, driving people onto the streets is not on the agenda for some advocacy groups this time around.
“No amount of protests will change who Trump is,” said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the advocacy group Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition.
“I would rather devote less time and attention to him and a free press,” she said. “… My focus is: ‘What are our local elected leaders doing to protect their residents?’ And: “What are local immigrant leaders saying so that we can follow their leadership?”
The oath at noon
Trump will take the oath of office at noon, after which he will deliver his inaugural speech. In 2016, he gave a speech on “American carnage”, a relatively brief, 16-minute speech in which he described a moment of American decay, with “rusted factories” where “the wealth of our middle class has been torn from their homes”, jobs have disappeared, and crime and drugs have devastated communities.
“This American carnage ends here and it ends now,” he promised then.
The president-elect, who has won the support of more working-class Americans than any other newfangled Republican in history, will be surrounded by more billionaires this time around. According to reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is currently part of Trump’s inner circle, will be in attendance along with fellow billionaire tech executives Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Trump’s transition team teased the hopeful and a unifying message, even though the president-elect has been known to strive for unity and then resort to more doomsday rhetoric.
The day begins with Trump attending a service at St. John’s Episcopal Church. John in Lafayette Square, followed by afternoon tea at the White House. Speeches and performances will begin at the Capitol at approximately 9:30 a.m
The performers will reflect the unique musical styling that Trump has employed at his campaign rallies – including one at the Oaks, where he abandoned formal politicking and began dancing on stage to his playlist. The Village People, country singer Lee Greenwood and opera singer Christopher Macchio will perform.
Following his inaugural address, Trump will attend a luncheon hosted by Congress’s Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. This will be followed by a parade and a series of executive orders.
Trump is expected to attend and speak at three balls later in the evening.
Local and federal law enforcement expects more than 200,000 people. Members of Congress, President Joe Biden and former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are also expected to attend the ceremony (though former presidents will reportedly skip Trump’s inaugural luncheon).
For Biden, Monday marks the culmination of a half-century of public service and the end of a term that ended with a whimper. He tried with little success to cement his legacy and overcome negative public perceptions of his tenure. In Wednesday’s farewell speech, he again called Trump a threat to democracy and warned Americans to be careful with their freedoms.
In a letter to the nation, he called serving as president “the privilege of my life.”
“Nowhere else in the world could a kid with a stutter from humble beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States,” Biden wrote in the letter. “I gave my heart and soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times over with the love and support of the American people.”
Staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.
