Trump Inauguration Debrief; January 6th Pardons; Day One Executive Orders; Biden Pardons His Family; College Football National Champs

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3:15Hi, this is Mo Shwanunu, the Mo from Mo News. If you're familiar with us on Instagram or our podcast, I'm a longtime TV news producer who launched an independent news brand just a few years ago. As you know, Nicole is on maternity leave. So this week, my co-host Jill and I are guest hosting Money Rehab. Each day, we're going to be sharing the latest episode of Mo News right here on the Money Rehab feed. So you guys get the news you need to know every day this week. Here's today's episode.

3:44Hey, everybody. It is Tuesday, January 21st, 2025. You're listening to the Mo News Podcast. I'm Moshe Wanunu. And I'm Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you just the facts. And we read all the news and read between the lines so you don't have to. And cover history on Monday, a huge day in American history with the inauguration of Donald Trump again. And Moshe, we are recording with me in New York and you are still in Washington, D.C. Yeah, making my way back late Monday, but still was in D.C. for this sort of want want inauguration because it wasn't out on the National Mall. It was indoors.

4:21Still lots of Trump supporters around town talking to them. Super pumped, super excited. The line from a number of them, America is back. They were excited about the weekend, the festivities, a number of inaugural balls last night as sort of the high priced donors were celebrating in black tie last night. But already Trump got to business within minutes of the inauguration yesterday. Yeah, so let's get to some news here. Donald Trump is officially the president again and off to a quick start with a number of executive orders. We'll recap the inauguration. And what's next for his presidency? First on immigration, declaring a national emergency at the southern border as immigration agents prepare for a crackdown on undocumented criminals in Chicago today.

5:09The president issued a sweeping pardon, roughly 1 ,500 criminal defendants charged in the January 6th Capitol attack. Plus, Trump declares a national energy emergency and signs executive orders proclaiming that there are only two biological sexes and halting diversity and inclusion programs in the government. Finally, Trump announced he'll rename the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali. Jill, we'll tell you about what's behind that, including the renaming of America's tallest mountain. And right before leaving office, Joe Biden issues a number of controversial last minute pardons, including to several family members.

5:49Yeah, literally announced just minutes to go. His people put it out. Jill, there are a number of Democrats that are very unhappy about the optics of this decision here. By the way, it wasn't just limited to his family. Fauci got a pardon. We'll explain it. Another excuse for us to say, you get a pardon. You get a pardon. You get a pardon. Everybody got it. Jill didn't get a pardon and Biden didn't pardon himself, but the rest of the family got him. And last, we'll have a recap of the college football playoff national championship. And Mosh has on this day in history. Jill, a historic moment on this day in 2020 that I'll remind you of, even though we probably don't want to remember.

6:26All right. at 12 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, Donald Trump officially became the nation's 47th president. On Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, Trump recited the 35-word presidential oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. He hit the ground running, signing a number of executive orders within minutes of taking the oath of office, but not before he took the stage for a nearly 30-minute inaugural speech, where he began by painting a picture of an America that needs saving. He took aim at the Biden administration, saying our nation has suffered greatly in recent years, and he vowed to bring about an America that is respected, admired, prosperous and strong.

7:04Similar to his speech in 2017, he spent time focused on calling out what he believes were the flaws of the previous administration, as he stood several feet from outgoing President Biden and Vice President Harris. Trump talked about ushering in a golden age of America, promising a new chapter of his America First agenda. In fact, the two most popular words in the speech, America and American, he said them 41 times combined. So let's hear some of it. The golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.

7:51In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly, but we are going to bring it back and make it great again, greater than ever before. We will be a nation like no other, full of compassion, courage, and exceptionalism. Moshe, I was one of the millions of people watching from home. It was most of us, Jill. As we all mostly did. 800 people in the rotunda. But as Trump was just going off on what horrible shape the country is in, and without naming Biden and Harris really taking aim at them, I felt awkward for like everybody in there. Is this a normal thing that incoming presidents do while the outgoing president is sitting five feet from them?

8:31No, we've had very contentious elections in years past, but typically in the inaugural, it's about looking forward, what they're going to do, less a campaign style indictment of the previous administration. But this is Trump style, right? He did this in front of Obama in 2017, talking about the American carnage that laid before him from the Obama administration in 2017. Now, eight years later, slightly lighter touch here, I guess, from Trump this time, but nonetheless, going after Biden. And, you know, you could see Biden kind of like looking down at the ground and they were indoors. So like much closer than they would have been if they had the kind of typical setup outdoors.

9:12So again, could Trump have probably just focused on what he was going to do without just like trashing the guy he just beat? No, but such is his way, right? That's sort of like, don't let the door hit you on the way out, but I'm going to hit you a couple of times with it as we're leaving here. Even though he engaged in these niceties and riding the Capitol together and they had tea together, you know, Biden brought In fact, these traditions that exist. Nonetheless, Trump had choice words for Biden in his inaugural address. He did spend most of the speech giving very specific details about executive orders he signed on his first day in office, laying out the priorities of his administration, a list of many initiatives he ran on he is already engaged in.

9:57He called these executive orders the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. He vowed to declare a national emergency at the border and send troops down to stop illegal immigration. He immediately shut down the CBP1 app that allowed asylum seekers to begin the process of entering America. He also declared a national energy emergency and said the government would end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. We're going to get into those specifics later, along with some of the executive orders that he signed on his first day. It is also worth noting who else was on screen during Trump's speech to the nation.

10:32Sitting behind him on stage were members of his family, some of his cabinet picks, and the former presidents and vice presidents. Prominent seats on stage also went to tech CEO billionaires who, in some cases, were sitting in front of his cabinet members. Mind you, Trump had to move his inauguration indoors because of record cold temperatures in Washington. So seats were limited to several hundred people as opposed to thousands that could have watched had it been held outside. There was an overflow room in the Capitol. Crowds were invited to watch in D.C.'s Capitol One arena. So these were hot tickets amongst the many Trump allies and donors, and only some very special people were given the look.

11:10Moshe, who stuck out to you? So it was notable for those tech CEOs, right? Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support Trump and his co-running Doge. Though it looks like he's running Doge on his own now. Vivek Ramaswamy reportedly now done with Doge before it even got started is headed back to Ohio after some internal issues there. So, Moshe, you and I have made predictions about how long certain Trump relationships were going to last. You're saying Vivek Ramaswamy didn't make it through day one. No, no, he does not appear. so based on the reporting here it looks like in the battle of Elon versus Vivek, Vivek is already out at Doge and will continue to watch all of this but back to the tech CEOs here in addition to Musk in that row is Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder along with his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez they donated to the inaugural fund also their Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla we've noted that Zuckerberg also donated to the inaugural fund and has made a point of making some moves in recent weeks to try to engender goodwill with the new administration, including dropping fact checking, putting a couple of Trump buddies on the meta board, doing the interview with Joe Rogan, where he went after Joe Biden, among several things.

12:27Also there, the Apple CEO, Tim Cook, the Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, the TikTok boss, Shozi Chu, the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, again, sitting in the row in front of the cabinet. Like, Marco Rubio had a worse seat than Jeff Bezos. If you looked behind him, also notable a number of top donors, Mary Madelson, the casino magnate, wife of Sheldon Adelson, who passed away. Mary Madelson, I think, gave more than$100 million, if not closer to$200 for the campaign here. So she had a very prominent seat there. Now, we've always seen sort of prominent CEOs and business leaders potentially attend inaugurations here, but never seated like this prominently.

13:08In that cabinet row, you did see the number of cabinet nominees there, including those who were still waiting for a hearing, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Pam Bondi was nominated for AG, Kash Patel nominated for FBI director, Doug Burgum, among several others there. And then there were like the overflow rooms in the Capitol, where even governors and spouses of members of Congress, et cetera, were seated there. And then Trump went to go visit with them. But the fact that these tech CEOs, some of these donors, et cetera, were in the room where it happened, pretty remarkable, given that there's just a couple hundred of them in there.

13:44A reminder, we haven't seen an indoor ceremony like this since 1985, since the second Reagan inaugural. You noted the cold temps. Jill, you know, it was cold, but like, was it as cold as Obama was in 09? Sure. It is leading to questions as to whether crowd size was really the issue here, given that a number of hotels were not even fully booked here. And so whether, you know, we had mentioned security is a potential issue. Haven't seen more on that. A crowd size weighing potentially here on Trump, even though he won't admit it openly, you know, especially given how cold it is, how many people are he going to have on the mall?

14:19We know how important crowd size is to him. There were the comparisons between the Obama inaugural and the first Trump. This is now the second Trump. There wasn't that much buzz. The feeling even among Republicans, Trump supporters, as I spoke to him was like, yeah, this is probably a crowd size thing. Meaning that he was given the choice and chose to do it inside because he was nervous the crowd size wouldn't be. Yeah. I mean, presidents have a choice to do where wherever they want in the world. You know, like, you're the president. This is your inauguration. Where would you like to hold it? So he made the choice on Friday to move it inside, noting the weather.

14:50But certainly there are folks who believe weather didn't wasn't the only issue as far as this. And Trump really had a unique day yesterday. We haven't seen an inauguration like this again in 40 years. And then he went to the arena and addressed fans where he then signed executive orders in front of them. It was an interesting contrast, though, that ceremony. You know, Trump officially is the oldest person to be inaugurated as president. He's actually several months older than Biden was four years ago. And then in contrast, you had a 40-year-old J.D. Vance, the third youngest ever VP in American history, behind Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon when Nixon was Eisenhower's VP.

15:29So he was there. He had his daughter behind him, adorably, like sucking her thumb. He's got a very young family. He's only 40 years old. So notable contrast there, the man who's a heartbeat away from the presidency happens to be the third youngest, whereas the president, technically, the oldest to ever take the oath of office. Notably, Trump did not highlight tech that much in his speech, although he did give a shout out to Elon Musk in a sense when he mentioned his ambitions to plant a U.S. flag on Mars. After Trump's speech, Carrie Underwood sang America the Beautiful acapella after a technical difficulty so you could briefly hear the music.

16:04Then it cut out. She waited more than a minute for the music to come back, during which time the camera was cutting to various people kind of like smirking and being awkward. It was a very strange thing. Like, like just suddenly there was a huge tech issue until she was like, you know what? We know the words. Let's just do this. Like, let's not wait any longer. But I felt like it was one of those like tech CEOs. They're just like us because they were all like awkward. And like, I felt like I was doing that myself watching kind of like, oh, my God, what's going to happen now? Elon Musk was giggling.

16:37Yes, maybe we're immature. But more power to Carrie Underwood there. Some artists might not have been willing to do it, but she knows her voice. She knows she has her voice. And she did an incredible rendition. In fact, based on the one or two seconds of the music that played, it sounded like what she did a cappella was more powerful than it would have been had she sang over the band. As we mentioned before, earlier in the day, the Bidens revived the tradition of the outgoing first couple hosting the incoming first couple for tea. In 2021, Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration. Also, they took part in the tradition of Biden and Trump riding to the Capitol together in the presidential limo.

17:14It came as you saw Obama, Bush, Clinton, all in attendance, none of whom feel very warmly about Trump. None of them feel warmly about Trump. Some who literally, you know, Hillary snickered at times in some of the things Trump was saying in his speech. Now she's had to watch him get inaugurated twice after losing the presidency. but nonetheless, this feeling, despite everything that was said during the campaign trail, despite saying this guy's a fascist, he's going to ruin democracy, they were all there, minus Michelle Obama, who stayed in Hawaii. As I mentioned, the camera would pan at times to Biden and former VP Kamala Harris a lot during the speech.

17:50They were cordial. They clapped at times, smiled, stood when crowds stood. Nonetheless, got to be zoning at a time like that, right? Just being like, oh my God, like I can't believe what I'm watching before. You know, Kamala Harris thinking she's going to beat him. I mean, Biden still said in interviews as recently last week, I totally could have beaten this guy and made part of his legacy, like, you know, ensuring that Trump would not return to the White House again. So a lot of probably complex thoughts happening in their mind as this goes on. And then you do see like Trump's smile and the smiles of his family, the feeling from them that they're back.

18:24Watching George W. Bush sort of has that 10 year old boy energy at a family event at times, like just making weird facial expressions, et cetera. I think watching Prince Louis out in the UK. As soon as he walked onto the podium, he gave somebody like a very aggressive wink. It was just great. It was classic. He's W, he's W. As I mentioned, Hillary Clinton cracked up specifically when Trump announced he was renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. She could not help herself, but to laugh to the point where I think Bill looked over at her towards the end being like, all right, you know.

18:56Like get it together. Like your former secretary of state, former first lady, former senator. We knew this part was coming. We knew this part was coming. And then the revival of the tradition, the Bidens walking out of the Capitol, the Trumps and the Vance is waving at them as they flew off in the Marine One helicopter, though it was not called Marine One because he's the former president. It's a special air mission, something. And then he got to take the presidential jet, California, where they're staying out there. And it just so happens that Biden is staying at the estate of a billionaire Democratic donor out there in Santa Inez, California.

19:31And that's all she wrote for Joe Biden for now. After the official inauguration ceremony, Trump headed to meet supporters in an overflow area of the Capitol, which is where he really let loose, talking about some of the agenda items that he didn't mention in his official inauguration speech. And that includes a nod to the January 6th rioters saying that they'll be happy with his actions, suggesting that he may pardon them. He then criticized Joe Biden for some of the pardons that he had made, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who were the only Republicans on the House Select Committee for January 6th.

20:04Why are we helping some of the people? Why are we helping Liz Cheney? I mean, Liz Cheney is a disaster. She's a crying lunatic and crying, crying. Adam Kinzinger, he's a super crying. I never saw the guy not crying. He's always crying. I look at him. I remember years ago he was actually on my side. And then one day, you know, when you don't want to kill people in wars, they turn against you. So, Jill, I don't know what he's talking about, the crying. I've never seen Adam Kinzinger cry. And I've seen him a lot, by the way. Like, he's always on TV. I sound like CNN all the time. Anyway, this is the speech Trump wanted to give.

20:38In fact, he said as much in the speech. He's like, you know, they made me be all presidential for my inaugural speech. Then he walks downstairs to give this speech, unfiltered, upset about the Biden last second pardons. We'll talk about those in a little bit here in the podcast. He said that the Vance has tapered his language a bit and made him talk about unity for the official speech. And then he goes and gives this speech, which is sort of the raw, unfiltered Trump that you normally got at his campaign rallies, where he's like, can you believe they did this? Can you believe they did that? And this is really what I'm going to do.

21:08I love that he thought that his inauguration speech was unifying by his standards. By Trump's standards. Right, because he normally gives the kind of like, you know, just going after everybody's speech, which is the after speech that he gave off the cuff there in a different part of the Capitol. Trump then went to Capital One Arena, signing executive orders in front of a crowd of 20 ,000 along with his family. So that replaced the inaugural parade that was intended for supporters. It was moved inside because it was just too cold. And then after returning to the White House Monday evening, President Trump pardoned about 1 ,500 people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, amid Trump's false accusations that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

21:52He also commuted the sentences of 14 of his supporters in connection with the attack. And that includes individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, like Enrique Tarrio, that is the Proud Boys leader who is convicted of seditious conspiracy. Tarrio was serving 22 years in federal prison. Trump's actions include, quote, full, complete and unconditional pardons for some of the most notorious participants in the attack, including others convicted of assaulting police, destroying property, carrying firearms, or otherwise contributing to the violent rampage. The president also ordered the Justice Department to shut down hundreds of pending January 6th prosecutions.

22:38Okay, now to the speed read where we're going to dive a bit deeper into some of the immediate moves that Trump is making. In his inaugural speech, the president announced his first executive order will be to declare a national emergency at the southern border. He also announced he'll reinstate what is called the remain in Mexico policy from his first term, which requires migrants to stay in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court date, which critics have argued exposes them to danger. As part of his immigration agenda, Trump said all illegal entry will be immediately halted. He's going to send troops to the southern border and officially designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

23:14Also today, through executive order, Trump said he'll invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives presidential powers to detain non-citizens during times of war to, quote, eliminate the presence of foreign gangs and criminal networks, bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil. So most migrants who were waiting in Mexico to enter the U.S. and they had appointments with the Biden administration's CBP1 app that we had mentioned earlier. That app went offline at 12 p.m. yesterday as Trump was being sworn in. And there are some images online where you see some of those migrants in tears, breaking down in tears after they were so close to coming into the United States.

23:55Yeah, though we've heard this from the Trump administration from the moment they won in November, that they were shutting this thing down, not to expect anything. And so ultimately here, it's going to be very hard at this juncture to be seeking asylum here in the U.S. as the Trump administration looks to do the exact opposite in terms of letting people into the country. In fact, their focus is not only not letting folks in the country, but beginning mass deportations. Still, then there's the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which Trump mentioned. The more than 200-year-old law. This is going to face legal issues.

24:28The same thing we saw first time around. The Trump folks feel like they haven't figured out this go-around, that everything they did was sort of haphazard eight years ago. They've had time to think it through. Nonetheless, still controversial to bring back a law from the John Adams administration here. But we'll see what judges rule, how judges rule on these various provisions that remain in Mexico policy. That was actually created by Trump, implemented back in 2019. It resulted in tens of thousands of migrants waiting for extended periods in Mexico, known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocol.