Donald Trump, inaugurated as the 47th president at the Capitol: “The decline of the US is over”

Donald Trump He is already president of the United States. Chief Justice John Roberts has sworn in at the Capitol Rotunda from office to the man who already led the world’s leading power between 2017 and 2021. Trump began his speech by saying that his Administration will always put “America first” and that he will make the country “great again.”

“The decline of the United States is over”has assured the new president, who has promised a “golden era.” Meanwhile, he has criticized the policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden. Trump has also recalled his assassination attempt and said that “was saved by God to make America great again”.

“The future is ours and the Golden Age has just begun. God bless America,” Trump concluded after about 35 minutes of speech. The inauguration ceremony has been moved inside the building at Trump’s request, due to the low temperatures in the American capitalwhere the thermometer marks five degrees below zero at this moment.

The act has not been without a certain historical irony: the Capitol, which is the enormous building that houses the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States, was assaulted by Donald Trump’s followers four years ago, in an attempted coup. State instigated by the then president to prevent the ratification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump’s return to the White House ends America’s most spectacular political revival since 224 years ago George Washington became the first president of that country. Four years ago, Trump left Washington mired in a political abyss. The former president was facing his second impeachment – a vote of no confidence that, like the first, a year earlier, was successful – for his attempt to steal the 2020 elections. His relationship with the Republican Party was severely damaged, although The personal ‘bad blood’ with the leaders of that party was not going to prevent Trump from continuing to use the party’s resources to continue communicating with his base.

Donald Trump is the only president of American history that has been refused to recognize the results of an election. Four years ago, he left the White House in the morning, so as not to attend the transfer of power ceremony. And he took with him a series of state secrets that would end up causing his prosecution by Justice, which has been interrupted, precisely, due to his electoral victory in these elections.

The crisis four years ago was the culmination of four years of a turbulent presidency, culminating in the worst wave of racial violence in more than five decades, after the murder of the African-American George Floyd by a police officer in the city of Minneapolis and the arrival of the Covid-19. The day Donald Trump left the presidency, 4,409 Americans died from the action of this virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

But now, all that belongs to the past. Trump is president. His electoral victory has been meager. Although he won all the decisive states, he only got 49.8% of the vote, surpassing his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, by just one and a half points. But his control of the Republican Party is absolute and that party also controls all the levers of power: the Supreme Court, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

It also has the support -or submission- of the country’s economic elitewho has bowed to Trump in a way unknown in recent American history. In a corner of the Capitol Rotunda were three people who were ‘worth’ 912 billion dollars (877 billion euros): Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos y Mark Zuckerberg. With them was the president and CEO of Alphabet, Sundai Pichar. If you add up everything that its companies are worth, plus Apple, which was also represented by its president, Tim Cook, there is almost ten billion euros in value.

His political intentions have been made clear even by the list of guests at the swearing-in ceremony, which includes Hungary’s authoritarian president, Viktor Orban, and China’s, Xi Jinping – who has not attended, but has sent his number two, Han Zheng -. The battery of Executive Orders that the new president is going to issue this afternoon are symbolic and, also, a sign of the times that are approaching. Trump is expected to change the name of Denali National Park, in Alaska, which is an indigenous word that has been the official one for 44 years, to McKinely, in reference to the Republican president assassinated by an anarchist in 1901.

Trump could also decree that the Gulf of Mexico renamed Gulf of America (in Spanish, “from the United States”) and, in a field closer to his followers, allow the release of some of the Capitol attackers on January 6, 2021. At the political level, Trump will dictate measures, possibly arrogating to himself exceptional powers, to fight against illegal immigration, although everything indicates that he will limit these police forces to large cities controlled by the Democratic opposition, and to expand oil extraction to protected areas, a source of energy of which the US is the world’s leading producer.

If many Republicans, out of fear of Trump’s retaliation or out of support for the former president, did not attend Biden’s swearing-in in 2021, just as some Democrats did with Trump in 2017, today there has hardly been a boycott. The most notable absence It was that of the former first lady Michelle Obamawho was also not present at President Jimmy Carter’s recent funeral. The disappearance of Michelle Obama from those events, of maximum social and media relevance, has unleashed all kinds of rumors about her private life.

But overall, Trump has the support of Washington. Although Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar started the ceremony celebrating “the peaceful transfer of powers of our democracy”, in a clear indirect to the Republicans for what happened in 2021, the general feeling is that water passed does not move the mill. The more than 100 Democratic representatives who boycotted Trump’s inauguration in 2017 have been reduced to two dozen. Trump is the present. And the future. At least until 2028.