Washington Donald Trump claims that he will portray himself as something noticeably off-brand—a unifier—shortly after taking the oath of office next month, marking a political transformation that will be remembered for years to come.
His inaugural address’s theme? “Unity,” he said in a recent interview with Kristen Welker, moderator of Meet the Press on NBC News.
“Unity will bring you joy,” he remarked. It will be a message of solidarity.
For the time being, it is unclear what that actually implies in practice. Trump won the presidency in 2016 thanks to a split electorate. By using the same blunt language and conveying a similar hard-line message, he regained the White House again last month after losing it four years earlier.
Trump, who is 78 years old, has shown no indication that he is reconsidering his divisive stances on mass deportations or forgiving those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress counted the electoral votes for Joe Biden’s triumph.
He continues to be openly and vocally resentful of the way he claims prosecutors, courts, Democratic politicians, and the media have harmed him. He singled out House members who looked into the Jan. 6 incident and suggested they ought to be imprisoned during the interview when he urged unity.
Steve Bannon, a prominent White House adviser during Trump’s first term, stated in an interview that we are not living in a cheerful, clappy moment. The politics of Kamala Harris failed. Why? Because Americans’ lives are not happy at the moment. Trump won by a landslide because of this.
Nonetheless, according to some Trump advisors, he genuinely wants to heal the political division. They claimed that after running his final campaign, he is in a unique position to do so in an effort to leave a positive legacy.
On November 5, an unexpected event occurred during the election. Trump received a new look from voting blocs that had previously rejected him. He won the popular vote for the first time in his three attempts, gaining support from Black and Hispanic voters in crucial states that are typically in the Democratic coalition.
According to a post-election Pew Research Center survey, the majority of Americans supported Trump’s future intentions. A greater percentage of voters had more positive opinions of Trump than at the close of the 2016 and 2020 elections, even if the majority questioned his ability to mediate a truce between red and blue America.
Dick Morris, a longtime informal political adviser to Trump and a former Bill Clinton campaign adviser, stated, “I think he sees a major opportunity here for bipartisanship and breakthroughs,” after effectively defeating the Democratic Party in Congress and winning both the popular vote and the electoral vote. Additionally, I believe he believes there is a genuine opportunity for him to establish a new front because people are worn out by the fighting on both sides.
Trump pollster John McLaughlin stated that it would be incorrect to dismiss his appeal for a national reconciliation out of hand.
In an interview, McLaughlin stated that Trump is not your average politician since he is a businessman. He’s being straightforward when he tells you something, so you should believe him.
“He will attempt to bring the nation together,” McLaughlin added. Trump will only serve one term. He will encounter resistance. But he d like to have a historic presidency and accomplish more for the country.
Binding up a fractured nation is a goal that recent presidents have shared and none have reached. Americans have been in a bad mood: anxious about the future and unhappy with political leadership, polling shows. One of the few patches of common ground is a collective belief that the nation s political system is broken,surveys show.
Biden mentioned unitynearly a dozen timesin his inaugural speech in 2021, yet two-thirds of Americans now believe that the country has gotten more polarized since he took office, aMonmouth University pollfound.
For Trump, a starting point might be spelling out what he means when he says he wants to narrow the political rift.
In his mind, does that mean his rivals should stifle their policy objections and line up behind his agenda? Or does it mean that he ll compromise with Democratic lawmakers and end the attacks on those who defy him?
No one has ever gotten rich betting on Donald Trump to do the right thing, because he never does, said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank.
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump transition spokeswoman, said in a statement: President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election. He will unify the country through success.
With millions watching live, the inauguration would be the obvious forum for Trump to commit himself to healing, rather than stoke national divisions.
Every president hopes at least some part of his inaugural address will prove memorable. Abraham Lincoln s two speeches bookending the Civil War reached poetic heights. Ronald Reagan s address in 1981 set a tone for the new administration: In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.
Trump s first inaugural address was remembered mostly for the term American carnage. After he finished, a mystifiedformer President George W. Bushremarked, That was some weird s—.
Bannon recommended that Trump try something new this time a gesture that could unite right, left and center given the intense dissatisfaction with the lawmakers who will be sitting on risers directly behind him.
The only thing I would recommend to President Trump is if he wants to unify the country is that halfway through the speech, pivot the podium around, face the Washington, D.C., political class sitting in the risers and read them the riot act, Bannon said. Tell them things are going to change, that there s a new sheriff in town. Then, turn back around and finish the speech facing the American people. That will unite the country.
Oftentimes, the high-minded prose in an inaugural speech is quickly forgotten in the pell-mell rush to get the new presidency off the ground.
The ultimate test will be not so much the words Trump speaks from the teleprompter but the actions he takes over the next four years, analysts said.
Ted Widmer, a speechwriter in Clinton s White House and now a history professor at City University of New York, said in an interview: If unity were followed up by actual policies that promote unity like bringing Democrats into his Cabinet and working with Democrats in Congress on legislation that meets the needs and desires of a lot of different kinds of Americans that would be great. But nobody expects that. It s slash-and-burn already, and he s not even president yet. He just nominates extremists to his Cabinet.
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