After another dark but scripted inaugural address — this time, in the Capitol rotunda — President Donald Trump went downstairs to the Capitol Visitor Center and delivered a very different speech: off-the-cuff, lighthearted and largely nonsensical.
Trump dubbed it “a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” adding that he gave the room full of supporters the “A-plus” treatment.
In the speech — which Trump delivered without a teleprompter for about 33 minutes and which was longer than his official inauguration address — the president divulged anecdotes that his advisers and Vice President JD Vance urged him to drop from his official remarks.
He joked about Speaker Mike Johnson’s tiny House majority. (“We gave him a majority of almost nothing,” Trump said.) He remarked on the shooting that almost killed House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. (“You talk about being shot!”) He noted that Vance had a rocky start when he named him as his running mate. (“Remember the first week was a little bit, like — the fake news was hitting him really hard.”) He lauded the Jan. 6 “hostages.” (“They said, ‘Please don’t bring that up right now. You can bring it up tomorrow.’ I said, ‘How ’bout now?’”) He disparaged Hillary Clinton. (“She didn’t look too happy today.”) And Nancy Pelosi. (“She’s guilty as hell.”) And Liz Cheney. (“She’s a crying lunatic.”) And Adam Kinzinger. (“He’s a super cryer. I never saw the guy not crying.”)
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He spent considerable time praising Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. (“You mean we couldn’t get you in the front row? I’ll tell ya.”) He talked about his infamous border wall. (“You know what happens is when you fill it up, it’s like water.”) He even talked about first lady Melania Trump’s feet. (“Her feet are absolutely aching.”)
Trump leaned into many of the conspiracy theories he popularized on the campaign trail, most notably his claim that the 2020 election was “totally rigged,” which became one of his biggest laugh lines on Monday.
And he actually undercut some of his own campaign messaging.
While he acknowledged inflation was important to voters, he said that he grew wary of discussing it on the trail.
“They all said inflation was the No. 1 issue. I said, ‘I disagree,’” saying immigration and border security was more important. “How many times can you say an apple has doubled in cost?” Trump asked.
In contrast to the off-message spectacle in Emancipation Hall, Trump’s inaugural address in the Capitol rotunda was notably on-message. He offered a dark depiction of a nation in “decline,” a “crisis of trust.” Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene called that speech “the best speech I’ve ever heard him give.”
But Republicans told NOTUS last week that they expected, and hoped, that Trump’s official speech would sound more like his latter remarks — upbeat, unscripted and funny.
“It was classic Trump,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told NOTUS. “I thought he rose to the occasion in the rotunda, and then he had a stream of consciousness down in Emancipation Hall. He’s Donald Trump.”
“Either get used to it or be frustrated,” he said.
But if this was the speech lawmakers wanted, their desires may have been misplaced. Vance and Johnson frequently looked out of place, as they stood behind the newly sworn-in president as he ranted and rambled to the crowd.
He curiously spent some time remarking upon the democratic tradition he was enjoying — the peaceful transition of power — but seemed to shun four years ago. At one point, he described watching former President Joe Biden departing the Capitol building for Joint Base Andrews in a helicopter “out of respect,” calling the moment “a beautiful custom.”
“It’s something that’s taken place for a long time. I guess it’s as old as helicopters,” he said. “We used to get into a stagecoach.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.
Oriana González, a reportet at NOTUS, contributed reporting.
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