Ideas | The lines from Trump’s speech that will resonate with time

“American carnage” is gone. No phrase in Donald Trump’s second inaugural address softened his heartstrings as much as the chilling words of the first.

But the humiliation caused them? Portraying the US as a dystopia in dire need of help? It was prominent in his speech on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, as he was in his speech after his inauguration eight years ago.

And with them came the new messianic procession. The 47th president of the United States — who is also the 45th president — told us that he is not just seeking to align this country with the vision of the MAGA movement. He is on a mission from God.

Recalling the day in Butler, Pa., in July, when “an assassin’s bullet grazed my ear,” Trump said, “I felt then, and I believed even more, that there was a redeeming factor.” my life. God saved me to make America great again.”

That’s the keeper this time – Trump’s trademark narcissism and grandiosity, with a measure of unsettling theocracy, in one worrying sentence. And this is a sign of the confidence that he felt about all the executive orders that he then promised, all the laws that he showed in advance and all the changes, from the military border to the war of awakening, that he promised.

While parts of Trump’s speech — the promise of national prosperity, the promise of “national unity” — paid homage to tradition and yielded to convention, there was a darkness in it that it could not and did not cover up such widespread delights. Mostly he did not inspire. He made announcements and arranged numbers.

He had filed a seemingly endless complaint about the messiness of the Democrats in government before today. North Carolina cleanup efforts after Hurricane Helene, trying to contain the Pacific Palisades wildfires, inflation, gender and race-related activities, oil regulations fossils — America seems to have gotten nothing under any other leader than him. But he fixed it all. And take control of the Panama Canal along the way!

His quirky style contrasted with his comical schedule and even more serious sensibilities. It is said that our most unique qualities increase as we age, and Trump is the maxim made president (again), his revenge and vanity at its peak.

In one of the other most memorable lines of his speech, he said, “In the past eight years, I have been tried and tested more than any president in 250 years.” It’s a disingenuous reading of American history. I wonder what God would say about that.