Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump brought back his campaign rally pageantry one last time Monday, this time turning the typically stuffy process of signing executive orders into a stadium-filling spectacle.
Trump returned to Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., on Monday evening—the same site that held his pre-inauguration victory rally Sunday night—to the first of his expected flurry of executive orders.
Not one to pass up a perfectly good spotlight, Trump took advantage of the opportunity to give his supporters one more campaign-style speech.
ADVERTISEMENT
“You’re witnessing the dawn of what is going to be the golden age of America,” Trump told his legion of adoring fans in the audience.
He entered the arena brandishing a black leather folder. A small wooden desk was placed at the center of the stage, which Trump inspected before taking a seat to watch the parade that was shifted indoors last-minute due to the dangerously cold temperatures in the northeast this weekend.
First responders from Butler County, Pennsylvania marched out shortly after the president and vice president arrived. Just six months earlier, a gunman tried to assassinate the then-presumptive Republican nominee at a rally at the Butler Farm Show Grounds.
Firefighters held the jacket and helmet of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter in the audience who was killed during the assassination attempt. The crowd stood for a moment of silence for the slain firefighter after their entrance.
A smaller contingent of first responders from Palm Beach, Florida followed, representing the location of Trump’s private resort at Mar-a-Lago.
Other paraders included bagpipers from the NYPD, students from the New York Military Academy, Trump’s alma mater, and a marching band from an HBCU.
Trump was eventually introduced by Steve Witkoff, his special envoy to the Middle East, who immediately credited Trump for the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that was negotiated and signed last week.
As Witkoff spoke, a group of family members of Gaza hostages stood wearing yellow scarves, holding photos of their loved ones. Witkoff introduced them as guests of honor and brought them to the stage, where they shook hands with Trump and Vance and remained for Trump’s entire rally speech.
Trump quickly fell back to playing his usual hits from the campaign trail: casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election, claiming his electoral victory was “too big to rig,” attacking “deranged” Jack Smith, the former special counsel investigating him, waxing poetically about the word “tariff,” and even complaining about windmills.
Trump eventually announced the first executive orders to the crowd: rescinding 80 executive orders signed by Biden, issuing a “regulation freeze,” an order directing his Cabinet to bring down inflation, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, end the “federal government censorship of the American people,” and instructed federal law enforcement agencies to preserve all records of “political persecution” under the previous administration.
He also took the opportunity to complain about Biden’s last-minute move to pardon members of his family. “Did you know that Biden, while I was making my speech, pardoned his whole family?” he asked the crowd.
Later in his long-winded speech, Trump said he found out about the pardons after the ceremony. “Oh, can I go back out there and talk about it? That wouldn’t be very elegant. Our first lady would say ‘please don’t do that.’”
After concluding, Trump sat at the wooden desk on stage, where he began signing the orders. A microphone was set up at the desk, picking up the noise of his pen signing the pages as an aide read out what he was signing. After one order, Trump asked for the mic to be moved closer so he could talk to the crowd again.
“Could you imagine Biden doing this? I don’t think so!”
As Trump got up to leave, he began tossing the pens into the audience.
The top executive orders on Trump’s long agenda included declaring a state of emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization, and declaring that there are only two genders. He also signed orders to wipe federal DEI programs and implement a flurry of other government reforms.
