
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo
Donald Trump takes the oath of office as the 47th president. Just out of frame behind him? The three richest men in the world.
At 12:01 p.m. Eastern time today, Donald Trump pledged to preserve, protect, and violate the Constitution of the United States. So help us, God.
The most immediate violation, of course, is the executive order he is issuing today that suspends birthright citizenship, so that the immigration cops (abetted by the Army and local police, thanks to a Trump order resurrecting the Alien Enemies Act of 1798) can deport the American-born children of undocumented immigrants. Amendment 14, Section 1 of the Constitution reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump’s henchmen argue that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” thereby excludes undocumented immigrants and their born-in-the-USA children. Despite that, The Wall Street Journal reports today that undocumented people convicted of capital crimes are to be given the death penalty, which some might construe as being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and then some.
Trump’s orders, the Journal continues, also include making noncitizens and citizens alike recipients of the death penalty for murdering police officers. Should he pardon the January 6th assailants of the Capitol Police, this also might strike some as an inconsistency. But sometimes, consistency is the hobgoblin of people capable of at least rudimentary reasoning.
Trump’s 2017 inaugural address was notable for its depiction of a nation beset with crime and depravity, and this year’s version actually doubled down on that big lie. The presumable disasters he cited ranged from the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the Justice Department to the Pacific Palisades fire, which dared, Trump pointed out, to take the homes of “some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country, some of whom are sitting here right now. They don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting.”
And there, in a phrase, most likely an aside, was the quintessential Trump. The fire victims he chose to single out weren’t the middle-class Black families of Altadena; they were the Palisades billionaires who’d come to pay him fealty. It was the destruction of their homes that was “interesting”—meaning what, exactly? That the fire, which burned down at least 7,000 homes, was actually designed by nefarious parties (illegal aliens?) to single out the homes of a handful of very rich Trump campaign donors? Can we get a meme going on this? After all, the guys Trump glanced at as he said this—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, who got the prime seats, behind Trump’s kids but in front of his incoming cabinet—own the media.
(Talk about your rich men north of Richmond! Never before in American history has so much wealth come to the capital to cozy up to power. Somehow, the musical selections omitted “We’re in the Money,” which is the real anthem of the oligarchs of Trump Nation.)
To no one’s surprise, besides sealing the border and deporting a considerable number of citizens (in 2022, the Pew Center estimated there were 4.4 million American-born citizens who were children of at least one undocumented immigrant), Trump also pledged to revive American manufacturing, which had experienced its first revival in half a century through Joe Biden’s clean-energy grants to green-energy manufacturers—grants that Trump promised to repeal.
He vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, though his control over international waters is questionable. He said he’d reaffix William McKinley’s name to that big mountain in Alaska (that he can do; Barack Obama changed it officially to Denali in 2015). He vowed to avoid all wars, and promised to retake the Panama Canal, though that would surely require American troops to fight their Panamanian counterparts.
The one priority that Trump omitted from his discourse was his paramount economic objective: renewing, and if possible, increasing his huge tax cut for the rich. That reflects his handlers’ understanding that the American people, very much including the MAGAnauts, actually favor raising taxes on the rich. After all, the initial enactment of those tax cuts back in 2017, which was supposed to politically benefit the Republicans, not only had no discernible positive effect, but contributed to the Democrats’ retaking the House in 2018.
No need to raise any qualms among the MAGA faithful. The worst are full of passionate intensity; best to keep ’em that way.