Donald Trump was sworn in as America’s 47th president on a chilly Monday in Washington, D.C. President Trump took the oath of office a little after Noon/ET inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda.
“From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world,” Trump said in his 30-minute inaugural address. “We will be the envy of every nation. And we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.”
Trump is the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve two nonconsecutive terms in the Oval Office. Outgoing President Joe Biden was in attendance for the swearing-in ceremony, and departed for California shortly after a peaceful transfer of power.
All of the major news networks were in attendance for Inauguration Day, providing dawn-to-dusk coverage, the tenor of which occasionally varied depending on the network. Teeing up MSNBC’s coverage, for example, Rachel Maddow—who is returning to the anchor’s chair five nights a week for Trump’s first 100 days—drew stark comparisons to how Biden approached his role in this American tradition versus Trump’s approach four years ago.
“You may recall that Donald Trump participated in none of these events with Joe Biden four years ago when it was Biden coming in as the new president to succeed Trump,” Maddow noted. “That was the first time since the 1860s that the sitting American president didn’t attend the inauguration of his successor.”
On Fox News, meanwhile, the observations were more laudatory, while still laced with mild critique in some cases. The Five co-host Harold Ford Jr. called Trump’s speech “sweepingly ambitious,” while also adding: “He should understand now and all of his supporters should understand, he’s now the president and looking back doesn’t serve him well. He’s got to look forward and begin to tackle the enormous agenda he’s put forward.”
“It felt as we were watching it, more State of the Union than inauguration,” noted Ford’s fellow co-host on The Five, Jessica Tarlov. “Some was muted, some was more rally like.”
