Roundup: Other takes on Trump's inauguration
Trump’s speech is a call to arms
Invoking an intensely dark view of 2017 America, President Donald Trump elevated his populist stump speech to crisp rhetoric but changed not a thing in principle.
The theme was explicit protectionism — America first — and an indictment of the people of both political parties in government that he will be working with, or at least trying to persuade, to accomplish his goals.
He promises power to the people, but the empowered will be his base. There is no unified view of where America needs to go. The gap is wide, the contrast stark.
People vary widely in what they believe government should do, and a majority of voters in November did not vote for Donald Trump or the vision he set forth Friday and on the stump throughout the campaign.
We had hoped for an olive branch. There was none.
There were pro forma statements of inclusiveness — we all bleed the same red blood of patriotism; there is no place for prejudice. But the underlying assumption was of an existing equal status, that everyone enjoys “the same freedoms.” That is not the perception of many people in America. It is not the reality.
Nor do all see a crumbling America. Many see a country with challenges, yes, but also with 4.7 percent unemployment, with crime at lower levels than decades ago and an economy vastly improved from eight years ago.
They see a diminishing middle class for sure, but it’s not because the money is going overseas; it’s going to the highest income levels in this country, whose representatives appear to dominate the Trump administration.
Trump delivered a clear view of his vision, delivered it well — without inflammatory ad-libbed asides — and behaved in a presidential manner. It is that very vision, however, and the cabinet he is assembling to advance it, that give pause to many.
The speech was not a call for unity. It was a call to arms.
The Mercury News, Jan. 21
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The new president deserves a ‘free shave’
This editorial is addressed specifically to the numerical majority of American voters who did not choose the man inaugurated Friday as the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
The message to them is, get used to it. He is extremely likely to be in office for at least the next four years.
There was some thought at first that maybe he didn’t really want to be president — he just wanted to win the election, to make a point. That turned out to be wrong.
There is and was some thought that he might eventually be impeached. No U.S. president has yet been removed from office, and the chances that the Republican legislators who currently make up the majority in both houses of Congress would oust Trump, even if his governance of the United States turned out to be a branding operation for his enterprises, are close to zero.
Four of our presidents have been assassinated, but the security measures that the U.S. Secret Service can now employ are such that it is extremely unlikely that what happened in 1865, 1881, 1901 and 1963 could occur again. The Secret Service certainly sharpened its teeth protecting President Barack Obama, given the many threats posed against him.
Four of our presidents have died in office of natural causes, although Trump gives every indication of strong health, and those who don’t like him would probably like Vice President Mike Pence even less.
Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block, who had the habit of drawing Richard M. Nixon with a five o’clock shadow, drew a cartoon offering Nixon a free shave when Nixon was elected president for the first time in 1968. (That turned out to be misguided optimism, of course.) In spite of misgivings about Trump by many Americans, he deserves the same fresh start.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 20