55. TRUMP BECOMES PRESIDENT - Live From The Capitol

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1:24Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kaye. Sadly, Anthony Scaramucci is not with us today. He is hobnobbing with the global elite in Davos. I have been in Washington DC for the big event here where Donald Trump now officially has become the 47th president of the United States. And not totally unexpected, true to form, the first few hours were a complete whirlwind of activity. I have spent my day up on Capitol Hill on a very windy, cold roof overlooking the Capitol. At one point, the departing president's helicopter literally flew over us and nearly blew the tent off the roof.

2:07So I've been watching it all happening from there. The inauguration ceremony itself, the farewell to Joe Biden, the announcements and the addresses of Donald Trump, the executive orders that he took within minutes of taking office. So I've been watching all of that. We will have more of Anthony back on the podcast, of course, later this week, but I wanted to fill you in on what's happened here in the meantime. So Washington DC has been transformed. I mean, I have never seen the city like this. This is a city that votes about 96 % Democrat. There are about three people in this city, perhaps, who like Donald Trump, but pretty much everybody else is a Democrat and doesn't like Donald Trump.

2:48You would not know that this weekend in Washington, DC. It's been a kind of whirlwind of parties and dinners, a couple of which I have gone to. And out on the streets, even a very liberal Georgetown, it has been a crowd of people wearing MAGA hats. Women doled up to the nines, everybody celebrating, lots of people from out of town. But it's very rare. In 2017, it was not like this at all. Washington DC did not turn into Trump central. And there was a very bullish, confident, excited atmosphere amongst all of Donald Trump's supporters. And they were waving and cheering and making a lot of noise, making their presence felt in the city.

3:34And I mentioned that just because it was striking to me having been in this city when Donald Trump was inaugurated last time, it was more subdued, there were more protesters, there was more opposition to Donald Trump, there was more nervousness about what the country had just done. And this time, it's like pedal to the metal and, you know, go as fast as you can, and everybody feeling very confident. The day was busy, right before Joe Biden stepped down as the 46th president of the United States with moments to go. There was two important pardons that I should just quickly fill you in on. One was a pardon of the former Joint Chief of Staff, General Milley, who's a friend of both Anthony and me, somebody we know quite well, and Dr.

4:15Fauci, somebody who I've interviewed who, of course, ran the COVID response, and all of the people who'd been on the January the 6th committee, and the police officers who'd also worked on January the 6th, and Joe Biden pardoned all of them. Now, there'd been quite a lot of discussion of this beforehand. We thought it might happen. Some of the people he pardoned had said beforehand they didn't want to be pardoned because they hated the implication that they had committed any crime of any sort. And actually, it was interesting. It's worth having a quick look at the statement that Joe Biden put out when he issued those pardons, because what he said was he didn't want this to be taken as in any way implying that the people who were being pardoned had committed a crime.

4:55But what he said was that he recognized, he was pardoning them because he recognized that the very fact of lawsuits against them or investigations against them or tax investigations against them could really destroy these individuals. It's incredibly expensive to be a defendant if the government decides to go after you. It's very stressful for the families. And so he was pardoning them in order to save those people from that kind of harassment preemptively. It was a preemptive pardon and in no way suggested that they were guilty of any crime. Several of them have come out afterwards and said, thank you for doing so.

5:35And they also mentioned their families. General Milley mentioned his wife and his kids and said this would have been awful for them if they had been investigated by the Trump administration. Dr. Fauci said the same. Liz Cheney also came out and thanked President Biden for the pardon. So it gets those guys who had been involved in the January the 6th investigations and in Fauci, in Millie's case, had been involved in the COVID response. Fauci, by the way, is somebody who will spend the rest of his life permanently surrounded by six federal Secret Service agents because he has so many death threats against him.

6:09And every time his name is raised by MAGA World as having orchestrated some kind of crime against America in the COVID response, he gets another death threat. He can't even walk to the corner store to buy toothpaste, he told me when I interviewed him recently, because it's just not safe for him to do so. So he's going to have that anyway. It just means that he won't be investigating. His family won't be investigated. So Joe Biden issued those pardons, not totally unexpected, kind of what many people had thought was going to happen. but then with literally minutes to go. So it's kind of interesting.

6:39I hadn't really realized this. Joe Biden stopped being president of the United States at midday Washington time on Monday, the 20th of January. Actually, at that moment, Donald Trump hadn't even been sworn in yet. The schedule was running late. And so you had this weird moment where Donald Trump hadn't been sworn in, but was actually officially the president of the United States. So with minutes to go, Joe Biden then did something that I think has been a lot more controversial. And I've had a couple of Democrats already texting me saying they didn't love this. He issued pardons for several members of his family, including his sister, his brother.

7:17These are the people that in Trump world constitute what they call a Biden crime family. And the Trump world's argument is that the Bidens have enriched themselves in the way they say that Hunter Biden did by proximity to the president, and they've made money out of that, and they should be investigated, and they should be sent to jail. And it's a kind of constant refrain in MAGA world, the Biden crime family. One of them, actually, James Biden, who is President Biden's brother, has been investigated by House Republicans, but it never led to any charges against him. There is actually no evidence of criminality there.

7:55But it didn't look great. And that's what a couple of Democrats have said to me, is that it really didn't look great. pardoning your family. It sort of made them look like there was maybe something nefarious going on, even though, again, Joe Biden in the pardon statement said, no, this is not any way a kind of admission of guilt or a crime, but I'm going to pardon them to save them and their families, the pain of an investigation. It was a weird day because in some ways it all looked normal. I mean, there were the normal trappings of an inauguration with the Marine band playing, and the singing.

8:31And yet in some ways it was super abnormal, like the president pardoning his family minutes before he left office. And it is worth remembering that Joe Biden, by the way, back in 2020, said that it would be a bad thing if Donald Trump preemptively pardoned people before he left office because it would not be a good look for the law and order system in the United States. So it was this weird juxtaposition of things where it's not normal for somebody, an outgoing president to pardon their family just before the end of their term. It's not normal for it to have been in the rotunda, which is the same room in the Capitol where the January the 6th protesters had kind of marauded on the January the 6th insurrection.

9:15By the way, check out our series on that if you haven't done yet. We are getting to the big day worth listening to in this particular moment, because today for me was full of symbols of January the 6th. I would love to have known whether for a moment Donald Trump thought, I didn't do this for Joe Biden four years ago as he sat there and Joe Biden shook his hand and said goodbye. Was any part of Donald Trump's brain thinking, oh, maybe I should have come and done this four years ago, especially as after the inauguration ceremony, he made a point of saying, and I went to the helicopter and said goodbye.

9:50It's one of the traditions. It's a great tradition, or words to that effect. It was a very nice thing to do, and it's a custom. And what a nice custom to uphold. Note to self, you didn't do that four years ago. So it was a kind of odd day of things that were normal, and yet all these resonances of January the 6th and the 2020 election. And of course, this was an incredibly important inauguration ceremony, because this is what American democracy is about. It's about these peaceful transfers of power. It's sort of the founding rock of American democracy is that every four years, there is a peaceful transfer of power.

10:26I mean, if it's the same president there, you still have an inauguration, but there's no one handing it over to, but you still have this ceremony. But if you shift from one party to the other, America is very proud of this. They see it as fundamental. And four years ago, it didn't happen. So in some ways today was about saying to the rest of the world, things are back to normal. American can be relied upon. American democracy is solid. The foundation is holding strong. We know Joe Biden has no time for Donald Trump. At the end of the campaign, he called him a fascist. And yet today he went through the processes.

11:01He invited him to tea at the White House. He shook his hands. He was there to say goodbye. He stood when they played hail to the chief. He applauded after the inaugural address. So I think all of that was done not because the people who were there, Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, even George W. Bush, have much time for Donald Trump. They did it to show that they respect the process and the American people. And that's why this inauguration, perhaps more than any other I've covered, any other in certainly modern American history, was particularly significant to show the world and show Americans that it can happen as it's meant to do.

11:41Okay, let's take a quick break. so I can grab some breath. You can get a break from me. I can get a drink of water and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about what Trump actually said he's going to do.

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13:19So that was the kind of atmospherics. And then there's the substance of what Donald Trump said in his address and the things that he announced. Something's got a lot of attention that I think are sort of, you know, shiny objects and don't necessarily tell us much about what's going to happen. And some things perhaps should have got more attention because I think they are more important and will tell us what's going to happen over the next four years. With Donald Trump, as I've said so many times, separate what he says from what he does. And today was a lot about saying. He said a whole load of stuff.

13:51How much of that actually gets passed into law? How much of it he can do without it getting challenged in the courts is a very, very different question. So he's going to take back the Panama Canal. That was one of the big announcements. So they got a whole load of attention. We're going to take back the Panama Canal. because the Chinese have been using it too much. They have their ports there. We didn't give this to the Chinese. We gave it to the Panamanians. We're taking back the Panama Canal. That will get an awful lot of attention. Let's see whether it actually happens. We're going to call the Gulf of Mexico is now called, by the way, in case you missed it, the Gulf of America.

14:24So next time you're flying to Cancun or over to Mexico City, you are flying over the waters of the Gulf of America. Let's see how many countries suddenly feel that in order to ingratiate themselves with Donald Trump. They now put on their own maps that this is the Gulf of America and start calling it the Gulf of America. We're going to have woke geography, I bet you, coming in soon for any country that still calls it the Gulf of Mexico. This is just the kind of thing that is an annoying challenge for Donald Trump's allies and countries around the world as they try to find out how to navigate the Trump administration.

14:55It doesn't really make a huge amount of difference. He announced an emergency on the southern border, a national emergency at the southern border, said all illegal entry will immediately be halted and will begin the process of returning millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. Let's see what that actually means. I'm not sure what that means to say that there's a national emergency at the southern border. Actually, crossings are significantly down at the moment, at the same time as saying that they are going to deport millions of people. And Anthony texted me this, So I wanted to just read that out to you.

15:30He said, here it is, that he's, oh, that Donald Trump is invoking something called the Alien Enemies Act, which was part of the Alien and Sedition Act passed in 1798 that empowers the president to detain, deport or restrict the movements of non-citizens from nations considered hostile to the US during times of war or declared threats. So he's invoking that. And of course, that was the sort of dark side of the address, this idea that they're going to round up lots of people and send them back home. But at the same time, as he is giving that address, he's also delaying the beginning of this process, which was scheduled, we were told, to start in Chicago on Tuesday.

16:12and now looks like it may be delayed because they're worried that there isn't an element of surprise because an official inadvertently told us that this was what was going to happen. So let's see whether Donald Trump actually ends up deporting millions and millions of criminal aliens. Barack Obama deported more people in his time in office, even though it was eight years long, than Donald Trump did in his time in office. I mean, if you took it per year, Barack Obama was a bigger deporter. He was known as the deporter in chief. Will Donald Trump end up deporting about the same number of people as Barack Obama deported when he was president?

16:51We'll see how far that actually gets. What does it mean for a national emergency at the southern border? Not entirely clear. Are they going to shut completely the southern border? That would be very difficult for American businesses. Anyone who buys a bottle of Corona beer in the United States may find or beer imported from Mexico may find that actually some of it was the parts or the bottles or the ingredients came from the United States. Anyone who buys a washing machine imported from Mexico, many of the parts will have come from the United States beforehand. That border is incredibly porous when it comes to imports and exports.

17:28So I'm not entirely sure what that national emergency means. He's also declared in his inauguration address, a national energy emergency. He said inflation was a crisis that was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices. And that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill baby drill. I do think that's the first time that words drill baby drill have been used in a presidential inauguration. Fun fact. Correct me if I'm wrong, any of you. This is not surprising. We are expecting quite a lot of deregulation around the energy industry. Again, however, it's worth pointing out that energy production is at record highs at the moment.

18:10It has grown enormously under President Biden, even though President Biden has focused on green policies. He has massively increased the amount of liquid gas that America extracts and other fossil fuels that America exports. So how much of a change this really is, let's see how much more Donald Trump can ramp up production. There may be some wildlife areas where he, I wouldn't be surprised, where he tries to start production very quickly. That's something that the right in the country would like to see happen, perhaps as much because it's a wildlife sanctuary as because of production. And then the line that got the most applause in the room as I was listening to it was kind of the cultural stuff, was defining gender.

18:55He said, as of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. Again, I don't know what difference that really makes. I think there will be a cultural move. And you're seeing it, interestingly, from companies as much as from government. but there will be a cultural shift against diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Anthony and I spoke about this on the podcast last week and we're going to see, I think, quite a big push there with companies leading the way thinking, right, we can ditch all of that money that we're spending on DEI programs and the government will try to do some of that too.

19:29Although somebody who is a government official pointed out to me recently that money has already been appropriated by Congress for some of these programs and the process of getting that money back again is kind of difficult. So I guess the reason I'm sort of couching it like that is that Trump says things and then you have to see what actually happens. And he also says things and then you have to measure it against the current reality. So he described in his inaugural address, it wasn't quite dark and gloomy like American carnage, but he described America that's been in decline. He spoke about an American government that was incapable of handling a single crisis and then kept on getting involved in crises abroad.

20:08Actually, you look at the state of America today, the economy is booming, unemployment is down, inflation is coming down, energy production is way up, border crossings are down. So against the reality of where America is, America is the envy of so many countries around the world because of its booming economy at the moment. I mean, every country in Europe would love to have the American economy as it is at the moment. So the idea that he's got this kind of country that's in terrible decline, I think, is just a bit of a misnomer. He talked about a golden age for America. He said, this is the beginning of a golden age for America.

20:44I used the phrase gilded age. I think that's perhaps more appropriate that we are heading into a gilded age. And I said that today on air, because one of the things that was striking when I talked about how things were normal, but not normal, one of the things that was striking about today's inauguration, From the church service through to the Capitol, through to the inauguration ceremony itself, through to the lunch, and then on to the Capital One arena where Donald Trump went afterwards, was the presence of America's tech CEOs. You had the CEOs of Google, Apple, Amazon, X, Musk was obviously there in the church ceremony.

21:22I mean, it was extraordinary to see these people in the church service, this kind of reverential moment of Christian religion before the inauguration itself. And who's there? All of the tech titans. Who's there sitting in the rotunda? All of the tech titans are sitting there. And it was like, this is the new power center. For years, Silicon Valley shunned Washington. They didn't want to have anything to do with Washington. But now you've got this whole scale move of these Silicon Valley bosses literally trying to buy up mansions in all of the fancy neighborhoods of Washington. They're all moving here and buying big houses here because they know that's where if they can get in with Donald Trump, they can benefit themselves.

22:04And I think we are moving into an era where these very wealthy tech companies become either wealthier, you have deregulation, you have a period of mergers and acquisitions. And it's a booming moment at a time where the world is facing a kind of big tech fork in the form of artificial intelligence and America wants to steam ahead with it. And for those who support Donald Trump, that's why many of them are so excited. They see this as the beginning of a gilded age. And Donald Trump spoke about that himself. He said, you know, this is the beginning of the golden age of America. Let's see. Let's see what he actually manages to do.

22:38He's laid out his intentions pretty clearly on a number of fronts, on immigration, on energy. The one area where he didn't really address today was tariffs. And I think that is very significant because tariffs could have a big impact on the American economy. And he noticeably chose not to give very many details or even really to talk about tariffs. There's some debate, I was told, by a former Trump advisor just this weekend. There is a debate going on in the economic team about how soon and how hard to push the tariffs. There was no announcement today of 25 % tariffs on Mexico or Canada. That may come, but it wasn't there in the inaugural address.

23:18So how much of what he announces can he actually do? How much can he remake American society and culture? How much of a pushback is there against the Me Too movement, against the Black Lives Matter movement? How much of the Trump administration is going to be that? How much does he actually deport illegal immigrants again, watch what he does and not what he says, what he's able to do? Does he have the tools and the capacity and the ability and the people and the mechanisms to remake America as much as he suggested he wanted to do in this inaugural address? I think we'll see. I'm a little skeptical about how much he can actually change things.

23:57I think the American government doesn't like change. His people are crying out for change, but it's not clear whether they want the most extreme version of MAGA or do they want MAGA lite? Anyway, we will be back on Friday with another episode. Anthony will be with me. And then of course, we'll be here with you on Sunday as well with an episode for our founding members of your questions. Please keep those coming. It's been a crazy day here in Washington. And I think it's going to be a very busy week. So just remember, separate the signal and the noise, what really matters when it comes to Donald Trump, because He likes a lot of attention and he will say stuff to get a lot of attention, but you've got to watch what he does, not just what he says.

24:41OK, guys, that's it. Thanks for listening. I'll be back later this week.