“Trump is not doing much to assuage the concerns or fears of those who voted against him,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told TNA. [Getty]
Donald Trump‘s presidential inauguration was expected to be unusual, given his unprecedented comeback and unorthodox approach to politics. However, seeing the day of ceremonies unfold was a sobering reminder for many of what will come in the next four years.
From his growing closeness to the tech industry’s elites, to his slew of executive orders (including the pardoning of rioters who tried to overturn the last democratic election results), to his forgetfulness in placing his hand on the bible during swearing his oath, to his rhetoric on quelling dissent and expanding US territories, inauguration day seemed to set the tone for what will come.
This was in addition to his mega-donor Elon Musk’s apparent ‘Nazi salute‘, which was somehow not considered the most extreme moment of inauguration day.
As Trump began the inauguration ceremonies, one of the first striking moments was the favoured seating of his biggest donors—some of them with better seats than his cabinet picks.
“Visually, one of the things that might endure is the presence of some of the billionaire tech bros, who seemed to have prime seating. For a president who ran playing up his support from working class voters, the preferential treatment the tech bros got may seem odd on its face,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told The New Arab.
In addition to the tech moguls in the VIP section was one of Trump’s biggest far-right Israel supporters, Miriam Adelson, who donated $100 million to a pro-Trump super-PAC (political action committee), reportedly after urging Trump to back Israel‘s illegal annexation of the occupied West Bank, if elected.
His executive orders unsurprisingly reversed much of what Joe Biden had issued, in addition to removing the US from international institutions, notably the World Health Organisation, and reversed Biden’s sanctions on violent Israeli settlers. Among his most anticipated orders was the pardoning of hundreds of 6 January rioters, leading to street celebrations outside a DC detention centre.
“Trump is not doing much to assuage the concerns or fears of those who voted against him. Not surprisingly, he went ahead with hundreds of pardons for the January 6th ‘hostages’, as he called them,” said Coleman.
Among Trump‘s other unusual but predictable orders was to designate the Latin American drug cartels as “terrorist organisations”, leading to questions over whether he would use the classification to justify an armed confrontation.
Also, along the lines of foreign policy, he casually said he wasn’t confident that the ceasefire in Gaza would hold, the long-awaited pause to Israel’s genocidal war the was arguably one of the main reasons that Biden and former VP Kamala Harris lost support in the US presidential elections.
“Since the Democrats are the opposition party now, maybe the best thing they can do is just sit back and hope the people get what they voted for,” Coleman added.Â
