AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Well, that was just one of many speeches from President Trump today, and here to break down what we heard and saw is NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: All right, so what were your biggest takeaways from Trump's inaugural address?
LIASSON: One of them was that there was a lot of continuity from his 2017 speech. This really was American Carnage 2.0. He said the government has a crisis of trust, it's a radical and corrupt establishment. He said he has a mandate to completely reverse a horrible betrayal. He said the government can no longer deliver basic services. He went on to say, never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to prosecute political opponents, even though that's exactly what he's proposed to do, using the Department of Justice and the FBI to exact, quote, "revenge and retribution" against his enemies.
CHANG: Right.
LIASSON: But it was also a grandiose speech, and I mean that in the technical definition of grandiose. It was excessively ambitious and exaggerating. He said, our power will stop all wars. He said, we're going to have prosperity like we've never had before. He also talked about the Panama Canal, and he said, we're going to take it back.
CHANG: And also, he said at one point in the speech that he wanted to be a unifier and a peacemaker, right? Like, what do you think he meant by that?
LIASSON: I'm not sure because this speech was not a unity speech. He did define unity at one point. He said, quote, "the entire nation is unifying behind our administration." So it sounds like he defines unity as support for him, kind of like a continuation of, I alone can fix it. But there wasn't an olive branch to the other side. There were no bipartisan appeals. It was very base-oriented. He said, today is liberation day.
So this is Trump unfettered. He controls all three branches of government. You could argue he also has the new media on his side - Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg up there, prominently seated with Jeff Bezos. So this is someone who feels he has a pretty free rein. He did make a comment - he reached out to the Black and Hispanic voters that voted for him. He said he looks forward to working with them.
CHANG: I mean, it's obvious, but we should just state, yes, I mean, he did win, and Republicans control Congress and the White House. So in terms of unity, isn't unity his already to claim?
LIASSON: Well, that's what you'd think. He's a legitimate president. He won a sweeping and decisive election. He won the popular vote. He has the power, as you said, to do pretty much what he wants. The only question is how much of this very ambitious agenda will the American people hold him to? In other words, do they care if he brings down prices or not or if their energy bill is cut in half in a year as he's promised? We don't know.
CHANG: Well, he certainly hit the ground running, right? Like, what has he done already? Just catch us up.
LIASSON: The White House has issued a lot of executive actions, some of which you heard him talk about in those bites. Sometimes, executive orders are nothing more than press releases, but others do carry the force of law, assuming they withstand a court challenge. And he did talk about them in his address - no more asylum program, no more refugee program. He declared a national emergency at the Southern border. He's going to have the biggest deportation - millions of criminal aliens. He's going to send troops to the border. He's designated the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He wants to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution. And he also wants to end what he called the EV mandate. He said, you'll be able to buy the car of your choice now. I think that will come as a surprise to many people who've...
CHANG: All right.
LIASSON: ...Been buying the car of their choice.
CHANG: A lot already, and there's more to come, right? Well, after his inaugural address, Trump spoke to his supporters in the Capitol. Let's take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 2020 - by the way, that election was totally rigged, but these are the - that's OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yes.
TRUMP: It was a rigged election.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: You know, the only thing good about it, it showed how bad they are, showed how incompetent.
CHANG: I mean, what do we make of those remarks - it's a rigged election, 2020?
LIASSON: Well, for the most part, he kept his gripes at bay in the inaugural address, but once he was in that less formal setting, he reverted to his list of grievances. He falsely called the 2020 election rigged. Even now he's won the popular vote and had a decisive victory, he's still relitigating the 2020 election. He wants to rewrite the history of January 6 so his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol become what he called patriots and hostages, not convicted criminals. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I was going to talk about the J6 hostages...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yes.
TRUMP: ...But you'll be happy because, you know, it's action, not words, that count. And you're going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages.
(APPLAUSE)
LIASSON: So this really shows you the extent to which his actions could weaken democratic institutions, including the justice system. We don't know how many of the January 6 convicted criminals, including some who viciously beat police officers on the steps of the Capitol, he plans to pardon. But these are people who were convicted by a jury of their peers for ransacking the Capitol in an effort to overturn a free and fair election, and pardoning them would be the first step Trump could take to undermine the rule of law.
CHANG: That is NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you so much, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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