It’s official — U.S. President Donald Trump is back in the White House. Besides the frigid temperatures that forced the proceedings inside with a drastically smaller crowd, his second inauguration ceremony went off without major hitches.
"The golden age of America begins right now," Connecticut’s Republican party quoted the President’s speech on X.
The crowd represented Connecticut and New York well, though some were relegated to the overflow room. Among them: Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont (D), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and U.S. Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-3), Jim Himes (D-CT-4), Andrew Garbarino (R- Bayport), Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), and Tom Suozzi (D- Glen Cove).
Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) had to cancel last night due to a funeral and flight delays from weather.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) were also in the crowd.
Blumenthal spoke with reporters shortly after the ceremony. He said he hoped Trump would give a speech that unified the country.
“Instead, it was replete with grievances and grandiosity playing to cultural and political divisions,” Blumenthal said. “I was struck by the panorama of big tech billionaires seated on a higher platform than supreme court justices, placed ahead of the cabinet.”
“Governors were relegated to a separate room, including Republican Governors. It was a picture of a government for sale,” he continued.
Notably absent were Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) and New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D).
“Once I learned the full extent of what today was going to be, in particular, that today would involve the massive celebration of political violence since later today, he is apparently going to sign hundreds of pardons for those that violently stormed the Capitol four years ago — I just couldn't become part of the window dressing for that kind of assault on democracy,” Murphy said.
Shortly after his inaugural address, Trump went to the overflow room where many of his supporters were seated. He gave a second, longer speech, this time going deeper into policy issues and sensitive topics that Trump himself said his wife and Vice President J.D. Vance asked him not to talk about on the main stage.
Those topics included pardons for January 6 rioters, allegations that Trump choked a secret service agent for refusing to drive him to the capitol on that day, criticism for the lawmakers that investigated the insurrection, how anti-climbing panels on the wall on the Southern border were unattractive. They repeated false claims that the 202 election was “rigged.”
He also told the people in the overflow room that they were a “younger” and better crowd than the group he had been inaugurated in front of.
Moments after Trump took office, CPB One, the app that allows migrants to schedule appointments to seek asylum, was shut off. It was one of the first of many executive actions Trump was expected to take on his first day in office.
Murphy said that would lead people who would have come into the country legally to do so illegally.
“I think you saw with some of these early executive actions that the point here is really not to fix things,” Murphy said. “The point is almost to just break them worse.”
Desiree D’Iorio contributed reporting.