Donald Trump aged 78 was sworn in as the 47th president of the US and pledged in his inauguration address to rescue America from what he described as years of betrayal and decline, prioritizing a crackdown on illegal immigration. Trump declared his intention to sign a number of executive actions in his first hours as president, including a number focused on border security and immigration, his top priority. Trump announced a "national emergency" at the US-Mexico border, declared drug cartels as terrorists, and will scrap government diversity programmes. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.
"First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border," he said. "All illegal entry will be immediately halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came." The speech echoed many of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017 when he spoke darkly of the "American carnage" of crime and job loss that he said had ravaged the country.
The inauguration completes a significant comeback for a political disruptor who survived two impeachment trials, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts and an indictment for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump will be the first felon to occupy the White House after a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.
"The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you," Trump said, before referring to the assassin's bullet that grazed his ear in July. "I was saved by God to make America great again." The ceremony was moved inside the Capitol due to the cold, four years after a mob of Trump supporters breached the building, a symbol of American democracy, in an unsuccessful effort to forestall Trump's loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Biden and outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, were present inside the Capitol's Rotunda, along with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, arrived with her husband Bill, but Obama's wife, Michelle, chose not to attend. Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration - including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg - had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump's family.
Trump, the first US president since the 19th century to win a second term after losing the White House, has said he would pardon on day one any of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. He skipped Biden's inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.
In another controversial announcement in his inaugural speech Trump said that in "a short time from now," the name of Gulf of Mexico will be changed to "Gulf of America."
