Donald Trump’s inaugural address Monday showcased an unusually refined version of the MAGA leader on the cusp of his presidency: it toiled over the economy and immigration, promising to bring America into a “golden age.”
But Trump’s unscripted second speech to a throng of his supporters served as his cutting room floor, sharing all the gripes that his script writers implored him not to dish. Seemingly unrehearsed and riddled with grammatical errors, Trump’s second speech of the day was remarkably more like him.
Trump ripped into a cohort of his so-called enemies, torching former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for supposedly allowing his supporters to tear through the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
“She’s guilty as hell,” Trump said, claiming he had promised to send 10,000 soldiers to the complex that day—despite the fact that multiple witnesses said Trump watched TV and stood by doing nothing as his supporters hunted and chanted death threats for Pelosi and former Vice President Mike Pence. “Maybe she wanted that to happen,” Trump wondered aloud.
“If you did that civilly, that would be a criminal offense,” Trump continued, blaming the former House speaker for failing to thwart some of his most ardent and violent supporters. (You cannot be charged with a criminal offense in a civil case, though a civil case can launch a companion criminal investigation.)
Trump on Nancy Pelosi: “She’s guilty as hell … that’s a criminal offense.” pic.twitter.com/0tFH6oVXfj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 20, 2025
Trump also complained about former Representative Liz Cheney and other members of the House January 6 investigative committee. “Why are we helping some of the people—why are we helping Liz Cheney? She’s a crying lunatic,” Trump rambled.
And minutes after Trump was sworn in, a portrait hanging in the Pentagon of former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley—who refused Trump’s orders to send the military to crush protesters in Washington in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and who has since referred to Trump as a “fascist” and a “wannabe dictator”—was suddenly stripped from the wall. (President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Milley on Monday, saving him from the Trump administration’s litigious ire.)
Trump has repeatedly promised to enact revenge on individuals he deemed to be “enemies of the state.” In the weeks leading up to the election, former Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews warned that the ex-reality TV star had morphed from someone with a vision for America into a vindictive far-right ideologue “hellbent on revenge and retribution.”
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