The Daily - Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Warning: This episode contains strong language.On Monday, in the culmination of an extraordinary political comeback, Donald J. Trump was officially sworn in as president of the United States for a second time.Mr. Trump’s return comes just four years after being voted out of office, and being impeached for trying to overturn that result.Peter Baker and Jonathan Swan, who cover the White House for The Times, discuss the message Mr. Trump sent in his inaugural address and the actions he took during his first hours in office.Guests: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times; Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: President Trump’s inauguration presented a vindication for the man and his movement.Mr. Trump pardoned Jan. 6 rioters and signed an order on TikTok.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It's a free volume on civil and religious liberation. My large t-shirt. Hands, hands, the good hands. So it is around 9.30 a.m. on an alteration day, and we are headed to the capital. And as you can perhaps hear through the microphone. Hopefully not if I do my job well. It is really, really windy and very cold cold so we are layered to the hilt like five layers. Wool socks. Double socked. Thermal underwear. Two hats because we're going to spend a

lot of this day outside. There it is. Yeah oh that's a beautiful view. We're standing about a football field and a half away from the US Capitol. I am staring at the dome and because it is so bone chillingly cold, the inauguration, which is normally held outside, facing the National Mall, this has been moved inside the Capitol in the Rotunda, which we're looking at. And at this very moment, President-elect Trump and President Biden are at the White House. They're having tea. They're going to come in a motorcade together to the Capitol, and we're looking at what we think is the exact spot they're going to arrive and it's very very heavily fortified. We're

surrounded by these tall metal gates. There are dozens of police officers. Wait, hold on, there's something happening. Now, if people have the arrival, the first location information... This is the motorcade. It's the longest motorcade I've ever seen, dozens and dozens of vehicles. And it is working its way to the eastern gate of the Capitol to deposit the two presidents inside the building for the inauguration. And Donald Trump is going to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily.

On Monday, in the culmination of an extraordinary political comeback. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. Donald Trump was officially sworn in as President of the United States for a second time. ...the office of President of the United States. Just four years after being voted out of office and being impeached and later criminally charged for trying to

overturn that result. So help me God. Congratulations for succumbing. Today, my colleague Peter Baker on the message Trump sent in his inaugural address and Jonathan Swann on the actions Trump took during his first hours in office. It's Tuesday, January 21st. Peter, thank you for coming in the studio. It's nice to be here with you in person. I don't think I've ever done this in person with you.

I don't think I've ever done this in person with you either I don't think I've ever done this in person with you either. Aren't you glad you're here? Yes. You're here for a day of history. However, however we look back on it, this is a day of history. Exactly. Because I got to talk to you in person. Peter set the scene for us inside the Capitol rotunda as Donald Trump prepares to deliver

this inaugural speech? Well, we see in the Capitol, inside the rotunda, this new power map of Washington. You see the outgoing President of the United States, Joe Biden, the outgoing Vice President, Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, seated just a few feet away from the victors, from the new power. I felt like inches from the camera. Very close, probably uncomfortably so for both sides. And behind the new president,

behind Donald Trump and JD Vance, are family members, as you would expect, members of their incoming cabinet, as you would expect, congressional leaders, and these billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And suddenly we see the new dynamics of power in Washington. It's a new crowd and they're all deferring to him. Thank you very much everybody.

Well, thank you very, very much. So describe the speech itself once Trump begins to deliver it. The golden age of America begins right now. Well the speech itself is obviously American Carnage 2.0 on some level, right? We will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. There is this... Just explain that for those who may not remember the reference to the first inaugural. Who could forget that?

But in 2017, of course, at his first inaug inauguration Donald Trump delivers this speech that becomes you know iconic, infamous, whatever word you want to use describing an America that was very dystopian at the time, very grim, very dark and unlike what most presidents do in their inaugural addresses so much so that George W Bush who was sitting there turns to Hillary Clinton and says well that was some weird shit. As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. This time around, eight years later, you hear the echoes of that speech again in this speech.

For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. He's describing an America in decline, an America that is weak on the international stage whose economy is weak at home. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad.

What was different in this inaugural address compared to eight years ago was how central he makes himself as the solution to all these problems. My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place. He's very much speech of triumph both politically but also personally. Over the past eight years I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250 year history and I've learned a lot along the way. The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you.

He was a central character in this speech in a way we don't often necessarily hear by new presidents. Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed to take my life. He talks about, in fact, the assassination attempt against him last summer. Just a few months ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason.

I was saved by God to make America great again. And he says that God saved him to make America great again, which really takes that formulation, which he's played with over the months, even further than before. He is the savior now of the country. A tide of change is sweeping the country. Sunlight is pouring over the entire world.

And America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before. What this speech did not contain was an overture to those who didn't support him. We think of inaugural speeches as almost dutifully containing language that says, to those who didn't vote for me, I offer you this message. Exactly. That was not in this speech. No, the words national unity were uttered. National unity is now returning to America.

But you wouldn't have heard it a lot in the rest of the speech, right? He didn't say anything nice about his outgoing predecessor, Joe Biden, even though that's the tradition when a new president comes in to at least thank you for your service. Didn't do that. Didn't talk about bipartisanship. Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.

He instead went for some of these wedge issues right from the start. It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. He said he's going to get rid of government programs that promote diversity and inclusion. I will also end the government policy

of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. And he even said that he would reinstate military service members who were discharged for refusing to have a vaccine during the COVID pandemic, even pay them back pay, which is of course ruling back a very specific President Biden policy. Exactly. And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories

and social experiments while on duty. It's going to end immediately. This is my seventh presidential inauguration. And this is not the way inauguration speeches are supposed to go, right? They're supposed to be the lofty speech. They're supposed to be the large theme speech, broad strokes. And here he makes this more like a State of the Union address and he outlines one idea,

one proposal after another, many of them divisive. It felt very different than a normal inaugural. Within that list, Peter, of things that Trump says he wants to do that made this feel State of the Union-ish, as you said, what struck me was how much it strayed from Trump's traditional isolationism, right? It was expansionist. Yes, exactly. Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history's greatest civilization. Rather than pulling back, it's about America expanding in a way, not in a new war in the Middle East, not Iraq, Afghanistan kind of way, but in a territorial way, a very 19th

century way of looking at the world. We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made. And Panama's promise to us has been broken. He did talk about the Panama Canal, which is an issue that nobody had been thinking about for 40 some years. And he said it was a mistake to give it away. And we're taking it back. And we're taking it back.

Not just we're going to renegotiate this or that, we're taking it back. Right. The implication being perhaps by force. Well, that's right. He hasn't ruled it out. And the other one, of course, was saying he had signed or was signing a proclamation. A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to

the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we will... Renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, which again is a very nationalist thing to do. And you're forgetting something, Peter. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars. He's going to plant a U.S. flag, he claimed, on Mars, stars and stripes on the planet Mars.

He's going to plant a US flag, he claimed, on Mars, which is about as ambitious an expansion vision as I think any president has ever had. And there in the back row was Elon Musk pumping his fists in the air and giving thumbs up. He loves that, of course, because SpaceX is his company and he was always talking about going to Mars. Right. From this day on, the United States of America SpaceX is his company and he was always talking about going to Mars. Right.

From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign and independent nation. We will stand bravely. We will live proudly. We will dream boldly and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future is ours and our golden age has just begun. Thank you. God bless America. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

So taken all together, how do you think we should understand this speech as a whole and what it means? Well, it's an aggressive speech, right? And it presages an aggressive term. This is not a president coming into office for the first time, having never spent a day in public office with the military. Remember in 2017 was the only president

who was that inexperienced. And he didn't know what he was doing by his own later admission. This time he knows what he's doing. He's not gonna let, you know, mealy-mouth establishment Republicans or military officers, any of these lawyers, or any of these other people tell him no. He's not gonna let them tell him,

sorry, that's illegal, sorry, that's unconstitutional, sorry, that's unwise. No way he's gonna listen to that anymore. In that sense, this did not feel simply like a speech articulating a restoration, because that would suggest I'm back just like I was before. What it sounds like he's saying is, I am back, I am better prepared, and I am capable now of transcending what my first presidency was. And as you said earlier, Peter, it is about me. And this term will be big and ambitious because I am. And the country in his telling is kind of him and he is

the country. And they're so fused in this speech that it's hard to imagine him tolerating the country not meeting his expectations because he and his expectations of the country, they're all so bound up. They're all intertwined in there, right? He says, I have been tested over these last eight years and I've learned, right? What he's saying is the country has also been tested and it's learned that it wants him.

I think that makes him feel very powerful in this moment, right, that he's got validation of the voters and there's for him this sort of sense of destiny and he is now tied in to the country. His identity is tied in as he presents it with the identity of the country. If he was down, the country was down. If he succeeds, the country succeeds.

And he is succeeding right now. He is succeeding right now. He is the most dominant force in American society today. He drives our conversation. He drives our debate. He even forces the opposition to respond to him on his terms. That may not last, but for the moment, he's got a lot of momentum going. Well, Peter, thank you very much. Thank you. Great to see you here in Washington. Great to be here. So now that Donald Trump has been sworn in and delivered his inaugural address, we wanted to head out into the streets of downtown Washington where

thousands of his supporters are milling around to understand how they are feeling now that it is official that he is president again. Are you here for the inauguration? Yes. Where did you guys come from? Virginia. From Florida. Hawaii.

I'm from Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, Fulton County. St. Mary's, Ohio. South Arkansas. Louisiana and those Cajuns love President Trump. They love Trump. And how are you feeling right now, like in a word, now that it's official that he's Louisiana and those Cajuns love President Trump. And how are you feeling right now, like in a word, now that it's official that he's president again? Fabulous! Is there any other word? Fabulous!

Relieved. Ready. We're ready. Very much ready. Yes. I'm excited. Elated. Hopeful.

Hallelujah. And what's the most important thing you want to see him get done? Maybe in the next few hours through executive orders, but definitely like in the next couple of days or weeks. First thing first, let's tackle these borders. Get our borders under control. You know, without borders, we don't have a country. You know what I mean? Without a front door, you really don't really have a house, you know? He's going to get rid of the woke policies.

Yes, we're not gonna be weaklings anymore. Oh my god, yeah. I would hope that all the J6 prisoners would be released today because they didn't commit crimes. They were using justice in a bad way. So many people voted for him and he is not gonna disappoint us. Not even on the first day. He never does. After the break, Jonathan swan on what Trump actually did on day one.

We'll be right back. back. Jonathan, I want you to pick up with the second half of Donald Trump's day when he's suddenly endowed with the full powers of the presidency. What does he do with that power? So I'm going to go right over to here and I'm going to sign in front of you. Is that okay? Good. He sits in a chair in the Capital One Arena in DC,

picks up his Sharpie and he starts signing executive orders. Why don't you say what I'm saying? Sure. The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions. And you have his staff secretary standing there announcing each executive order. ...to the federal government, ordering the restoration of freedom of speech

and preventing government censorship of free speech going forward. And then at the end of all this, he stands up. A surgeon, I have a pen! And throws the Sharpies into the crowd like he's a baseball star throwing a cap or a ball or something like that I've never seen anything like it. Mm-hmm. Then he walks out leaves the arena and Heads over to the Oval Office and keeps signing executive orders for the cameras

Essentially it's saying things are changing Now starting right now and he wanted that to be the message from the outset. So talk us through some of the specific orders that really stand out. Immigration is probably the area that they spent most time thinking about. Stephen Miller, who's one of his most important advisors, has been overseeing the entire process of developing these executive orders. And his most important issue is immigration.

It's also Donald Trump's. So every baby born in America is guaranteed citizenship. And he's trying to get rid of that for people born to undocumented immigrants, right? Trying to eliminate birthright citizenship. It's guaranteed in the constitution, not clear how he'll do that. There's going to be a lawsuit. We'll find out. But so that's one example, designating cartels as foreign

terrorist organizations is another declaring a national emergency at the border. A lot of these actions were strongly foreshadowed in his campaign. Basically what they've been doing for the last two years, three years is figuring out all the legal tools available to them to effectively seal the southern border, to end asylum, to freeze the refugee program

in this country, and also to begin what Trump has called the largest deportation operation in American history. They know what they're doing, and they know how to affect the machinery of government far better than they did in 2017. So I would expect to see real changes happening in the immigration space with the force of law behind them. So beyond immigration,

what stood out in the executive orders? A big part of what Trump is doing in these executive orders is unwinding the Biden administration's policies, in particular in climate. And you're seeing him get rid of subsidies for electric cars. You're seeing him make it much easier

to drill for oil in protected areas. He's also pulling America out of multilateral deals and institutions. He's pulling America back out of the Paris climate accords, which he had removed America from in his first term. Biden put America back into the deal. Right. Now he's taking it out. Reversing the reversal.

Exactly. And he's withdrawing America from the World Health Organization. That seems like a fairly big deal. Yeah, it is a big deal. And it's not just a big deal on its own terms, in terms of America's cooperation with other countries, you know, with global health. I think it's also a signal for what he might do

with other multilateral institutions. Donald Trump has always been skeptical of multilateral institutions. He's always always been skeptical of multilateral institutions. He's always been skeptical of the world trade organization. What's he going to do now in the second term? So it's important on its own terms, but it's also potentially a signal for other multilateral institutions that America is a part of that maybe America will be reassessing its global relationships.

So those are the high profile ones, but there's actually an order that hasn't been getting a lot of attention. And I think it's really important and actually could foreshadow where things are heading with Trump. The order is titled ending the weaponization of the federal government. When you actually read the order, the preamble asserts as fact that the Biden administration has acted lawlessly. And then it directs all agencies to produce reports on this. So whether it be through DOJ, through the intelligence agencies, whatever. These reports have to be produced and sent to the White House.

Well, if you have asserted this fact that this thing is happening and then you're telling your cabinet agencies, go and find me evidence of this thing and send it back to me. At a minimum, you're naming a bunch of Biden officials, damaging their reputations, whatever. But more likely perhaps, or equally likely, is you're setting up a roadmap for prosecution, for investigation, et cetera.

So the president is basically ordering every executive agency to go dig up potentially incriminating evidence that could be used against the outgoing administration and its personnel. Correct. That seems important to me. Particularly when you have a campaign where one of the themes was retribution. And then this is sort of the executive order version of, actually, yeah, let's do a little bit of retribution. Right, because it could become a tool of that retribution.

Pretty blatantly, yes. I think we have to end, and end quite meaningfully, with something that wasn't an executive order per se, but flowed from the executive pen, which was President Trump's pardons. Yes, and we knew these were coming, but they're pretty stunning. He is going to pardon more than 1500 people who were prosecuted for their roles in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. No matter what you did, you're getting out of prison. Now, there's 14 of them, I think the number is, who are getting their sentences commuted, but everyone's getting out. Whether you're a proud boy, whether you're an oath keeper, doesn't matter. You're getting out of prison.

The fact that he went that far says a lot to me about how Trump plans to use his power as president. Just explain that. Well, that's not the action of someone who's operating cautiously or with any amount of restraint. If you're basically saying, even though you know, the majority of Americans do not support pardoning all the January sixes, certainly not the ones, you know, who committed acts of violence, that if the fact that he feels empowered enough

to do that anyway, tells me a lot about his mindset right now, his confidence. His comfort with exerting a maximalist power. I thought that of all the things he did today, that was the most revealing. It's quite possible that the history books will look back on this mass pardoning as the defining act of this first day of Trump's presidency. And I think it arguably speaks to something that our colleague Peter Baker told us when we asked him to analyze Trump's inaugural speech. And he talked about just how much Trump is at this moment telling the story of America

in relation to himself and kind of fusing man and country in the way he talks. And now he's pardoning people who the justice system charged, in many cases found guilty of serious, some cases violent crimes. He would argue because a weaponized justice system mistreated them. But by many people's lights, what he's really saying is their crimes don't matter. And this brings me back to what Peter said. Their crimes don't matter because they were done in his name for him. Watching Trump today, it brought together so much of what he's done throughout this campaign,

which is the story he's told about this victory. It's not just an electoral victory. It's a victory, you know, mandated by God. And he's connected all elements of his story since he left office the first time with this sort of divine mission. It's, I'm a martyr, they're only prosecuting me for you. And of course, all these people who committed acts of violence in my name, they are righteous warriors too. They are martyrs too. And me coming back into office is justice for our side. It's the triumph of good over evil. And Donald Trump has always seen the world in this black and white way.

If you're with him, you're on the side of sunshine and glory and everything's great. Sunshine. He literally said the sun will shine in or something to that effect. And the other side is, you know, a scene out of Mad Max, apocalypse, death and destruction and crime and all manner of evil. And that's what today was really all about. It was Donald Trump returning as an instrument of God. But now that he's seen this arc of the story and the political power in their cause, now they are righteous martyrs and they've been saved. And so in his telling, has the entire country?

Exactly. Well Jonathan, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. On Monday evening, the families and friends of January 6th rioters celebrated Trump's pardons outside a jail in Washington, where several convicted rioters remain imprisoned. We are so grateful to President Trump. Promises made, promises kept. Promises made, promises kept.

In some cases, Trump's pardons resulted in the immediate release of rioters. A spokesperson for Enrique Tarrio, a former leader of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the assault on the Capitol, said that Tarrio had walked out of a federal prison in Louisiana on Monday afternoon as a free man. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In his final act as president, Joe Biden issued a wave of preemptive pardons to those who fear that President Trump will prosecute them over the next four years.

The pardons were given to members of Biden's own family, including his brothers, every member of the congressional committee that investigated January 6, including its vice chairwoman Liz Cheney and the government's lead scientist during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci. In a statement, Biden said that while he believes in the justice system, quote, these are exceptional circumstances. Following Trump's swearing-in ceremony, Biden boarded a military plane bound for California, where he was expected to begin a vacation as a private citizen and a former president.

Today's episode was produced by Claire Tenesketter, Astha Chathurvedi, and Will Reed. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Mark George, contains original music by Dan Powell, Mary Lozano, and Sophia Landman, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsferk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Afim Shapiro. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Bobauro.

See you tomorrow.