January 20, 2025: Liberation Day

Trump Looks to Reignite the American Spirit 

At noon on Monday, Donald John Trump was once again sworn in as President of the United States, completing what is likely the greatest political comeback in American history.

Shortly after taking the oath of office in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, President Trump delivered a bold and memorable Second Inaugural Address. Rightly forgoing poetry, he delivered a simple, direct speech that acted as a defibrillator for the American body politic. 

President Trump drew a portrait of malaise and decline—but unlike Jimmy Carter, he meant the political elites who’ve worked to sap America of its great potential and Americans of their self-confidence. With former presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden seated right behind him, Trump issued a searing indictment of their joint malfeasance and, in many cases, open corruption. Biden’s last-minute pardons for members of his family was an unexpected gift to Trump, strengthening his case against the ruling class. 

Turning from castigating the elites, Trump spoke of the kind of country America can be again. He extolled the sense of adventure and ambition—sacrificing life and limb to explore new frontiers—that has animated America throughout most of her nearly 250 years of existence. The president appealed to the character, determination, and grit of those who “laid the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced.” That America is Trump’s North Star—the one he must keep his entire focus trained on during his second term in office.

If President Trump’s address can be described in a single sentence, it is this: America’s greatest days are in front of us, not behind us. As Trump told the audience before him, “The golden age of America begins right now.” Rejecting any notion of the supposed “End of History,” Trump outlined an optimistic future where America can once again be a dynamic country that rebuilds at home and explores the reaches of space, a country that, above all, safeguards and showcases the permanent things: God, family, and our traditional ways of life.

Standing in the way are a group of wily villains, the 21st-century version of the “titans of industry” and “malefactors of great wealth” that FDR charged with starting the Great Depression. Trump blamed a “radical and corrupt establishment” for inaugurating “a crisis of trust,” leading the U.S. into disaster and decay. Cheap slogans such as “Hope and Change,” “Compassionate Conservatism,” and “Build Back Better” have culminated in disappointment and stasis, untethered empathy, crumbling infrastructure, and wars of choice abroad. Trump contended that for decades the ruling class has betrayed the country and its people. Our so-called leaders have “extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.” 

The ruling class, Trump continued, has sown targeted chaos domestically and defeat and dishonor abroad. As they fail to protect “our magnificent law-abiding American citizens,” they provide “sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals.” The regime has consciously and continuously disregarded its own citizens to care for potential Americans around the globe. Biden’s shoveling tens of billions in aid to Ukraine without a clear endgame contrasts sharply with the out-of-control fires that just torched historic neighborhoods in L.A. and North Carolina citizens who are still struggling in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation.

But no more: “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.” President Trump said that his administration will work to “give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom.” Though it’s less about “giving” and more about opportunity, Trump nevertheless understands that the American people’s birthright—the blessings of true liberty, not licentiousness—has been squandered. 

Indeed, his mandate of rebirth is derived from something higher. As Trump put it pointedly, “I was saved by God to make America great again.” His detractors undoubtedly see this line as hubris, but it should be understood as his recognition of the hand of Providence upon our nation and Trump’s own mortality. It’s also Trump’s acknowledgment that he understands himself as a world historic figure, a trait shared by many past statesmen.

President Trump demanded that Americans “[a]ct with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization.” He spoke about restoring American greatness, about our country being “respected again all over the world,” and “the envy of every nation.” The next four years, Trump intoned, will be “a thrilling new era of national success.” Greatness instead of mediocrity, ascent instead of decline—this has always been the American way.

Things that we took for granted, like the name of the Gulf of Mexico, are suddenly up for grabs. The tallest mountain in Alaska will again be called Mount McKinley. Our surprise and incredulity upon hearing these pronouncements show that we’ve made a fundamental error. We mistook our horizon as something permanent and unchangeable because we assumed we figured out history’s direction or maybe even God’s secret will. We took for granted that our country will keep moving along a liberal course that can never be altered. 

But the liberal myth of progress is just that—a myth. Modern liberalism is not the inevitable pull of history. Other options are always available to us—but only if we have the will and imagination. “A tide of change is sweeping the country, sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before,” Trump stated.

After the speech came the executive orders that were piled high on the Resolute Desk, with nearly 100 receiving Trump’s signature on the first day alone. DEI, affirmative action, and gender madness will no longer be pushed by the federal government. Also gone is the government’s weaponization of law enforcement agencies and its censoring of speech against the Right, a hallmark of the Biden and Obama administrations. On the southern border, Trump declared a national emergency and ordered troops to move in to protect our borders, designated cartels as terrorist organizations, stated he’d continue building the wall, and ended the policy of “catch and release.”

To the media’s horror, nearly all January 6th prisoners were pardoned. The Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of many have been violated by the slow-walking Department of Justice and prison guards who inflicted their own brand of unlawful punishment. The bureaucracy has been put on notice with regulatory and hiring freezes. And our federal buildings will once again reflect the great tradition of architecture that befits a people who yearn to govern themselves.

Perhaps the most important of these executive orders is the rejection of the unconstitutional concept of automatic birthright citizenship by soil. This notion, based on bad precedent and dicta in court opinions, rejects one of the two requirements for citizenship by birth spelled out in the 14th Amendment: one must be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Senator Lyman Trumbull, who participated in the framing of the Citizenship Clause, noted during congressional debate that the clause means “subject to the complete jurisdiction”—indicating that one must not owe allegiance to any other country.

For good measure, Trump delivered justice by rightly taking away the security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials, including John Brennan and John Bolton, who lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation. Trump, fortunately, followed the advice of smart commentators like the Claremont Institute’s Jeremy Carl, who recently made the case at The American Mind that Trump must go after his political enemies because “they committed serious crimes and badly damaged the trust in our American political system”—not simply out of personal revenge. 

While Trump has won the first round with the Deep State, he must be careful. Its denizens remain highly dangerous, shrewd opponents, as evidenced by their machinations to upend Trump’s last administration even before he was sworn into office.

This is why in the weeks and months ahead, the Right will need to steel themselves against relentless, coordinated attacks by the ruling class and its flunkies. And Christians especially will need to stand fast against the media’s attempts to sabotage Trump’s immigration agenda, as they run images and stories designed to sway public opinion in their favor. Outlets like Christianity Today that are sympatico with the Left’s aims on immigration, among other policy areas, will be running overt propaganda slathered with a layer of Christianese in order to get Christians to abandon Trump.

Nevertheless, America’s future is bright. By choosing Trump for the second time, the American people issued a significant, though not yet mortal, blow against the Left’s hegemony. They unequivocally rejected the managed decline the uniparty has been selling them under the guise of upholding “our sacred democracy.” Rumors of our country’s irreversible decline is fake news. 

Like any statesman, Trump will inevitably disappoint us. But his re-election is crucial for one singular fact above all: his victory shows that the American spirit is far from dead—by God’s hand, our country will soar to new heights. 

“We will stand bravely, we will live proudly, we will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans.” 


Image Credit: Unsplash

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Mike Sabo

Mike Sabo is a Contributing Editor of American Reformer and an Assistant Editor of The American Mind, the online journal of the Claremont Institute. His writing has appeared at RealClearPolitics, The Federalist, Public Discourse, and American Greatness, among other outlets. He lives with his wife and son in Cincinnati.

One thought on “January 20, 2025: Liberation Day

  1. Yes, Trump blamed everyone else for America’s problems. In doing so, Trump was being good narcissist and authoritarian. For projecting one’s faults on others is what they do.

    But what do America’s greatest days look like to Trump? It means belittling and even demonizing a member of the clergy for asking him to be merciful. Nothing could show the difference between America’s past and potentially future “greatness” and the Gospel more than that. For Trump, America’s greatness is tied to imperialism of different sorts. And the foundation for imperialism is arrogance. And arrogance feeds the ego needs of the insecure or those who are driven by anger.

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