The morning after she hosted the Golden Globes, comedian Nikki Glaser dropped by Howard Stern’s radio show to discuss her monologue and all the jokes she couldn’t tell — jokes that were left on the cutting room floor because of time, the sensitive nature of the Beverly Hilton crowd or a mainstreamed notion of decency.
She was hardly the first person to do this, a post-mortem ritual that allows edgier emcees to blur the line between public and private, restraint and release, allowing them to be contained and uncontainable all at once.
After his formal inaugural address on Monday, January 20 — conducted in the Capitol Rotunda out of fear that his supporters have a level of weather-based common sense comparable to that of drunk fans at wintery NFL games — President Donald Trump made a brief show of adherence to norms by standing around long enough to watch Joe Biden depart. He then returned to address an overflow room filled with supporters, ranging from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to former Phoenix television anchor Kari Lake to quinquagenarian-batterer JakeOrLogan Paul, at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall.
Greeting a room unsullied by oppositional ideological perspectives, with no threat of a former vanquished political rival rolling their eyes or laughing from a different part of the dais, Trump gave a speech that ended up being longer than his actual inaugural address. It was a speech that implicitly made a mockery of any commentator who praised the formal inaugural address as polished and — I can’t believe we’re returning to this grading curve again — presidential.
This is hardly the first time that Trump has showcased his multiple personalities, turning the United States of America into something closer to United States of Tara. As recently as his Republican convention speech, Trump gave a talk that was provided to the press in advance, sticking to the script and then going off-book for a seemingly endless series of digressions, deviations and detours into the Twilight Zone. (Sorry. I’m a TV critic. This is the way I have to see the world.) Several newspapers ran stories on Trump’s convention speech based exclusively on the prepared address, and I have no doubt that several newspapers will run stories on Trump’s inaugural speech based solely on what he said in the Rotunda — as if what he said in the Emancipation Hall wasn’t a direct continuation of the first speech.
Here, Trump began, Nikki Glaser-style, with a recitation of the things that he was urged not to say in the first speech by “cooler heads” like Melania Trump and the author of the source material for Ron Howard’s Netflix epic, Hillbilly Elegy. He said Melania urged him to be “unifying,” which was why he didn’t talk about pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists — he calls them “hostages” — and Joe Biden’s last-second pardons.
The inaugural continuation would have been bizarre coming from any other politician in American history. But it needs to be said with at least a modicum of praise that, much more than the first part, this was Trump in his element, as he meandered amid mentions of Steve Scalise’s blood transfusions; why he would have preferred to have J.D. Vance’s wife as his running mate; how the Jan. 6 insurrection was Nancy Pelosi’s fault; the rigging of the 2020 election (and his contention that he would have won California in 2024 without additional rigging); and how sore Melania’s feet are/were.
This second speech, completely off-the-cuff — as if a human being could ever “write” a speech like this — included a five-plus minute enthusiastic burble about how he praised Greg Abbott before he knew he was in the room; angry ranting about Biden pardoning murders and rapists (Biden commuted sentences of three-dozen people on federal death row); and his record margin of victory in Wyoming.
And he acknowledged several times that reporters will fixate on this second speech, which of course I am. Well played, sir. Well played.
The second speech — or “secondary” speech? — was, as he put it, giving the “A+ treatment” to his hardcore supporters, rather than just a cursory, “Thanks for sitting in the overflow.”
But what did he give the people sitting in the Rotunda earlier? And what was he supposed to have given them?
Well, Amy Klobuchar began the formal inauguration by saying that the theme was “Our Enduring Democracy” and praised the symbolism of holding the event not outside — as it has been held in rain, snow, cold and COVID for centuries — but inside “The People’s House.” It’s an aesthetically appealing space but also a space that never felt anything other than small, no matter how hard the network cameras worked to show the crowd and the beauty of the venue. There was just none of the storied grandeur of using the Capitol itself as a backdrop, nor the ability to capture the throngs of people stretching out onto the D.C. horizon. Even Dancing With the Stars veteran Sean Spicer wouldn’t be able to exaggerate the size of this audience.
The symbolism of having the speech in a space desecrated by a small but not insignificant number of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, has been lost on nobody.
Similarly, it has been lost on nobody that the effect of holding this speech inside and in front of a small and hand-picked room of people made it more intimate, like a State of the Union rather than an inauguration. The speech was elongated by protracted standing ovations, and the optics were made conflicting by the presence of various former presidents and first ladies and vice presidents — some of whom were in very central and easily tracked visual positions, and some of whom were placed somewhere that they could be noted but not featured on-camera. We knew when Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton took exceptions to claims that Trump made, and we were aware at all times of which figures stood for Trump’s applause lines and who remained seated and grumpy.
An outdoor inauguration, even Biden’s COVID-impacted 2021 inauguration, could never give that level of intimacy and could never be forced into that level of protractedness, because a standing crowd doesn’t need to take extra time to give a standing ovation.
Yes, the listing of certain executive actions — enhanced security at the border, dehumanizing of trans people, reclaiming the Panama Canal in some nebulous fashion — suggested the kind of list-driven approach that many presidents have utilized at their State of the Union addresses.
To me, though, it felt more like a Comic-Con presentation, albeit in a room dwarfed by Hall H. Trump began with the promise “The Golden Age of America begins right now,” a meaningless classification comparable to whatever phase of the MCU Kevin Feige has chosen to classify at any given time. Trump proceeded to make his way through various announcements that were leaked in the press hours and days and weeks ago, earning those standing ovations for each confirmation instead of each announcement.
“Is he going to announce a sequel to The Wall?” He announced a sequel to The Wall!
“Is he going to talk about a reboot of drilling?” He actually used the phrase “Drill, baby drill.”
“Is he going to trot out his best-known catchphrases?” There was one point at which he referred to “winning like never before” twice in under three minutes. Wakanda forever, President Trump.
The only way this could have felt more like a Comic-Con presentation is if he had shown the crowd a clip package of God saving him from an assassin’s bullet, asked fans if they wanted to see the clip package again and then played it three more times.
Sure, a Comic-Con presentation would have included more celebrity cameos, though the Rotunda gathering featured a bunch of billionaires, so who needs Robert Downey Jr.? Plus, the attempt to bring out Carrie Underwood to sing “America the Beautiful” led to confusion related to the musical accompaniment, a couple of minutes of awkward silence and then Underwood performing one verse of “America the Beautiful” a cappella. It wasn’t that Underwood was bad, but we’ll never know what that performance was supposed to be.
We will, however, always know all of the polarizing things Trump didn’t say in the first part of the speech, and all of the raunchy jokes Nikki Glaser didn’t make at the Golden Globes, and … honestly … my apologies for bringing Nikki Glaser into this.
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