President Donald Trump’s inaugural address is history, and those who thought we would hear a different Trump; more presidential, they liked to say. “They” were wrong again.
While columnist Noreen O’Donnell said, “His speech offered few lines to bring together a deeply divided country, Scott Pressler, founder of Gays for Trump, called it “the best he had ever heard.”
“We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action; complaining but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over; now is the time for action.” – from President Trump’s Inaugural Address
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Predictably, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard tweeted that there were several words missing from the speech – “liberty, equality, freedom, duty, constitution and self-government.” Wasn’t it enough, Bill, that he took the oath to protect the Constitution?
Another “old Washington” pundit, George Will, thought “it was the most dreadful inauguration address in history.” Obviously, Will, who writes over the heads of the average American, was dissatisfied that the new president used terms to which the average American can relate.
Even conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer struggled to find something redeemable in the address saying it was a “classically populist speech.”
Conservative radio show host. Laura Ingram, noted the “gray faces” on Republican and Democrat legislators alike, referring to Trump’s new version of governing. “It makes a lot of people uncomfortable.”
Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson called it a speech for Republicans only, and said “It is truly shocking how disconnected the speech was from inaugural history.”
Two other liberal newspapers, The New York Times and USA Today, referred to his address as “dark” and “dark and defiant,” respectively
Leave it to the leftist commentator Chris Matthews of MSNBC to invoke Hitler, as he often does. “I’m thinking, when (President Trump) said today, America first, it was just the racial, I mean I shouldn’t say racial, the Hitlerian background to it.”
Okay, okay … we didn’t hear that soaring rhetoric, that sameness of past inaugural addresses. When is the media going to realize that President Trump isn’t your conventional politician?
While The Wall Street Journal reported that “historians and speechwriters said the president delivered one of the most ominous inaugural addresses ever,” WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan, got it right. “The inaugural address was utterly and uncompromisingly Trumpian. The man who ran is the man who’ll reign. It was plain, unfancy and blunt to the point of blistering. Most important, he did not in any way align himself with the proud Democrats or Republicans arrayed around him. He looked out at the crowd and said he was allied with them.”
Here is one of my favorite passages in the president’s address:
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in the wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. That all changes starting right here and right now. Jan. 20, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.” – from President Trump’s Inaugural Address
(If you would like a free subscription to kramerontheright, simply scroll to the bottom of the column at right.)
