The return of Trump. (Screengrab from ABCNews.)
In case you chucked a sickie (Aussie slang) like Michelle and rode out Hurricane Don making landfall (for the third time) at the Capitol, here are a few takeaways from the made-for-TV, Hallmark, Up-with-People proceedings:
—Trump’s demeanor during the run-up to the inauguration under the dome was that of a southern prison warden grimacing in the presence of a Peter, Paul, and Mary sing-along. If you could have written dialogue into a bubble over his combed-over perm (a color Farrow and Ball might call Perp Prawn?), it might have read: “Wait until Pam Jo Bondi puts about half of you people in jail.”
—As a sign of desperation, I found myself warming to Kamala Harris, who sat stone-faced through the entire ceremony, no doubt still in disbelief that half of voting Americans decided to return to the White House an adjudicated sexual abuser, convicted felon (34 times), financial fraudster, stockjobber, and serial liar.
—The Clintons were in the third row, so I could not follow their pained expressions, but I assume both were coming to the same conclusion that the leaderless and clueless Democratic party is ripe for the picking—as Biden will vanish into a California sunset and never be heard from again and Obama is too busy denying those rumors of an affair with Jen Anniston (consigning him to the Ross Geller dustbin of history).
—Biden looked happy to be there, finally included “in something”, although I kept waiting for Lady McBiden to poke him as he nodded off. She might also have offered the same service to Trump, who looked groggy waiting for his role to shift to center stage. And we know that touching him is not in the First Runway Model’s political services contract.
—Melania’s brim hat pulled down over her eyes made her look like either Eliot Ness on a stakeout or some minor British royal sipping champagne at Ascot. Like a petulant child, she even wore it defiantly during the inaugural luncheon, although after a while, all I could see was a Pittsburgh Pirates reliever from the Willie Stargel “We Are Family” era.
—Humphrey Bogart as Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg, at his court martial for losing control of the USS Caine to mutineers, aired fewer grievances than did the newly inaugurated Donald Trump during his address to the nation, which sounded like one of those stream-of-consciousness rants Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic gave from his jail cell in The Hague. Did Trump not realize his cases are dismissed and he no longer has to lie at his depositions?
—When Budweiser’s favorite Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh was called from the legal bullpen to swear in Red Tied J.D. Vance (“…and to act like an exuberant puppy whenever you are near to the President….”), I got to wondering—if justice was really a thing—if maybe the inaugural committee should have set aside a seating area just for adjudicated sex offenders and MeToo! laureates. But for that maybe the proceedings would have had to take place outside in the cold?
—Trump made no mention of the wars in Gaza or Ukraine, although it must have warmed Vladimir Putin’s heart to hear that the U.S. Army is being deployed to a new Mexican Cartel War, not Donetsk. Jerusalem made a cameo appearance, but only during one of the many prayers (“Hear the cry of the hostages, both American and Israeli, whose pain our president so acutely feels….”) offered during the ceremony, which gave more air time to faith healers than social workers or teachers.
—As Trump spends his sabbaths either golfing or doing that spasmodic dance to “Y.M.C.A.”, I was a little surprised to hear him summon God to the rostrum and announce that the Almighty Oligarch had spared him from an assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania so that his Chosen One could “make America great again.” I guess, like Elon Musk, God isn’t subject to the presidential contribution limit of $3,300.
—As we were often reminded, this occasion was the 60th inauguration since the adoption of the 1789 constitution and since George Washington won the first “rigged” election, but I think you would be hard pressed in a search through history to find a president less capable than Mafia Don at reciting his inaugural speech. Reading in a Dragnet monotone, he sounded like a third-grader with his finger moving under the words and often on the verge of giving up and saying, “Christ, seven years of college, down the drain.”
—The “live studio audience” (I hesitate to call them citizens of a republic) interrupted Trump’s reading-by-numbers to give him numerous standing ovations, especially when he decreed neo-Nazi Nuremberg race laws that henceforth “Amerika vil only hab zwei genders fur die Kinder….”
I would say his decree sounded like this,
“What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe.”
but that would assume Trump could understand an allusion to Mein Kampf.
—Channeling his inner William McKinley, Trump put Denali (the Alaskan mountain) on notice that its days as a Native American symbol are numbered, just as the Gulf of Mexico is due for some gender reorientation. I guess that will take the sting out of the next school shooting.
—Trump missed his chance, when beating his war drums over the Panama Canal, to quote the 20 Mule Team Borax spokesman Ronald Reagan—“When it comes to the Canal, we built it, we paid for it, it’s ours and we should tell Torrijos and Co. that we are going to keep it!”—just as it was beyond him to quote California Senator S. I. Hayakawa, who said in the 1970s: “We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.”
—After the inauguration in the Rotunda, Trump wandered down to a spillover room and threw steak tartare in the direction of adoring country club lions—recalling the “stolen” election in 2020, all the “bad people” who had persecuted him, “Democrat wars,” and how best to invoice Mexico for remodeling the Wall. No longer reading from a teleprompter, it was the Trump that his followers know and love—that of someone having a long, incoherent conversation with himself.
