The two Trumps, now appearing daily in D.C.
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Photo illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios. Photos: Chip Somodevilla, Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Trump's inaugural speech Monday was the one his staff and advisers wanted: He hailed a new "golden age," vowed unity and a "revolution of common sense," and set forth an aggressive conservative agenda while bashing his predecessor.
- Less than an hour later, Trump gave a speech to Republican allies that was for him and his fans — a stream-of-conscious series of gripes and attacks on political enemies, including his oft-repeated claim that the 2020 election was "totally rigged."
- "I think this was a better speech than the one I gave upstairs," he joked to the crowd in the Capitol's Emancipation Hall.
Why it matters: He's back, and this is the new normal. The contrasting speeches showed the tension that has hovered over Trump and his team — and that's sure to continue.
There's what Trump wants to do, and what the professionals and advisers around him think he should do.
- "We struggled with this the entire time in the first administration. But Trump gonna Trump," a former adviser said. "The difference between now and then is, this crew doesn't sweat it."
The days of staff undercutting Trump appear gone. Instead, the focus will be trying to harness his energy and keep him from melting down.
- In theory, that should make for a White House that runs more smoothly than it did in his chaotic first term.
- "He is who he is, and it is exactly who the American people voted for and exactly what they want," a transition source said.
Catch up quick: On the campaign trail, Trump frequently used his Teleprompter speech by staff as a guide star. He'd say what his advisers wrote, then riff on his own because, he said, his crowds liked the spontaneity. Then he'd return to the script.
- Trump's speech at the Republican convention last summer showed the divide between the two Trumps on the stump — several minutes of thoughtful reflection on the recent attempt on his life, then more than an hour of rambling red meat for his loyalists.
Zoom in: Trump's official inaugural address did have some of his signature spice — aimed largely at outgoing President Biden, who sat passively in the Capitol Rotunda as Trump trashed how Biden had run the government.
- "We now have a government," Trump said, "that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad."
But much of Trump's speech was forward-looking on two fronts:
- A promises-made, promises-kept preview of hundreds of executive orders to militarize border enforcement, fight drug traffickers, make government more efficient, eliminate environmental regulations, and ban transgender-friendly federal policies.
- A sunny paean to America's frontier spirit: "We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars — launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars."
The muscular nature of the speech, its promises and its rhetorical flourishes drew praise even from a few Democrats, including Biden's former pollster, John Anzalone.
- "That may be the best speech he's ever given," Anzalone told Axios. "Clearly written to give America a patriotic hard-on."
Zoom out: The second speech was nothing like that. Trump made clear to the crowd in the Emancipation Room that he'd felt hamstrung by his official speech.
- "I did have a couple of things to say that were extremely controversial," Trump said, adding he has some "beauties" that would thrill his hardcore supporters.
- But Vice President JD Vance, First Lady Melania Trump and others talked him out of it, he said.
- "So I decided I'm not going to make it complicated. I'm going to make it beautiful. I'm going to make it a unifying speech," Trump said. "And then when they said, 'We have a group of people that are serious Trump fans [for the second speech]. I said: 'This is the time to tell those stories.'"
Trump promptly aired a series of grievances and attacks that earned laughs from his loyal audience.
- Foreshadowing the 1,500 pardons he'd issue later in the day, he called the Jan. 6 committee that investigated him over the 2021 Capitol riots the "Unselect Committee of Political Thugs."
- He criticized Biden for preemptively pardoning members of that panel, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, whom he called a "crying lunatic."
In closing, Trump said he'd asked Vance beforehand whether the crowd at the second speech should get "the A treatment, the B treatment, the C, the D or the F?"
- "I gave you the A-plus treatment," he told the crowd.
Trump later spoke at Capital One Arena, where the inaugural parade was held because of cold. His staff set up a desk for him to begin signing executive orders.
- Afterward, he threw commemorative Sharpie signing pens into the crowd. Then it was back to the White House to sign more orders and answer reporters' questions on live TV.
Said one Trump adviser: "He owned every second of screen time today."
