An emboldened Donald Trump declared that "America's decline is over" as he reclaimed the presidency on Monday, January 20, promising a crackdown on illegal immigration and portraying himself as a savior chosen by God to rescue a faltering nation.
"For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day," Trump, 78, said inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, the symbol of U.S. democracy.
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The inauguration completes a triumphant return for a political disruptor who was twice impeached, survived two assassination attempts, was convicted in a criminal trial and faced charges for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
He is the first president in more than a century to win a second term after losing the White House and the first felon to occupy the White House.
"I was saved by God to make America great again," Trump said on Monday, referring to the assassin&039;s bullet that grazed his ear in July.
Trump outlined a series of sweeping executive orders he plans to sign immediately to curb immigration, boost fossil fuel production and roll back environmental regulations, the first steps in enacting a far-reaching agenda that would reshape the government while testing the limits of presidential authority.
He said he would declare a national emergency at the southern border with Mexico, dispatch troops there and resume a policy forcing asylum-seeking migrants to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court hearings - all a prelude to what he described as an unprecedented operation to deport millions of immigrants.
"All illegal entry will be immediately halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came," he said, as Republican colleagues applauded and Democrats sat stone-faced.
Shortly after the inauguration, U.S. border authorities said they had shut down a Biden program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling an appointment on an app. Existing appointments were canceled, Reuters reported.
The half-hour speech echoed some of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017, when he spoke of the "American carnage" he said had ravaged the country.
While Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier, his speech was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into America and voiced familiar and unfounded grievances over his criminal prosecutions.
With Biden seated nearby, affecting a polite smile, Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor&039;s policies from immigration to foreign affairs.
"We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders, or more importantly, its own people," Trump said.
Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration - including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg - had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump's family.
Trump said he would send astronauts to Mars, prompting Musk - who has long talked about colonizing the planet - to raise his fists excitedly on stage.
Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among U.S. allies.