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Lest people think that President Trump (it feels so good to write these words) was making it up as he went along the campaign trail, his inaugural address should set their hearts at rest. The new president continued his campaign themes into his inaugural, signaling that they will dominate his policymaking and thinking for all of his presidency.
He declared the end of globalism, noting that the world's foremost nation was going to put its own needs first. And he notified the world's most controlling establishment that the goals of the average American would have supremacy.
No longer will the style and vogue of Paris and German salons or the consensus of self-interested bureaucrats be prevailing. Everything will be judged strictly by one criterion: What is best for the people that own this nation — the American people.
An economy committed only to the aggregation of wealth will now have to focus instead on the distribution of prosperity, not to different ethnic groups, but to those whose labor has made the wealth possible in the first place.
It was a fighting inaugural, devoid of the grace, eloquence and trappings of previous speeches. It plainly articulated what Trump plans to do and elaborated the themes of his election campaign. Watching the speech, we come to realize that President Trump regards the government as a continuation of the campaign by other means. He did not run for office as a candidate who now sheds the populist suit and governs as a bureaucrat. He is going to govern as he ran — raw, unvarnished, clear and decisive.
The message of this inaugural is clear: President Donald J. Trump means what he says.
Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.