“Vice President Vance, Speaker Johnson, Senator Thune, Chief Justice Roberts, justices of the United States Supreme Court, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, President Biden, Vice President Harris and my fellow citizens:

The golden age of America begins right now.

From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation. And we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.

During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first. Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.

And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud and prosperous and free.

America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before. I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success. 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.

But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face. While they are plentiful, they will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing and the United States of America.

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Donald Trump is once again President – and his second administration promises to be more Trumpian than ever.

Sworn in just after noon yesterday (1/20) – both the inauguration ceremony and his stick-swinging inauguration speech shielded from the cold inside the Capitol Building – he is essentially picking up where he left off. This time, however, Trump & Co have far more experience of how to navigate Washington’s corridors of power. They’re already showing it.

The past few weeks have seen Trump’s transition team prove its deftness in everything from foreign policy – that Gaza ceasefire – to a domestic agenda rife with executive orders promising to dismantle the vast DEI and identity politics network that former president Joe Biden and the Democrats had assembled with such alacrity.

And as Trump’s second inauguration speech made clear, he is only just getting started.

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Back at the Resolute Desk, the President signs Executive Orders

[This essay is stunningly remarkable as it is written by the founding editor and global editor-in-chief of one of the most Woke Anti-Trump media outlets in Washington, POLITICO.  It was published on politico.com yesterday (1/21) under his own name.  He is neither groveling nor abusive. His is an honest recognition of reality.  It is stunning nonetheless. –JW]

Donald J. Trump in his second inaugural address was everything his supporters hoped he would be:

In one light, it was all quite familiar. But the second occasion of Trump taking the oath of office also put him in an entirely new light.

For the first time, he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era.

Great in this context is not about a subjective debate over whether he is a singularly righteous leader or a singularly menacing one. It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record.

In other words, he is now a force of history.

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Democrats are in freefall.

As of Monday January 20, Donald J. Trump is officially the 47th president of the United States. He starts his second term in the Oval Office with a bang – rolling out dozens of executive orders fulfilling promises made to American voters -- and more popular than he has ever been.

Democrats have no idea how to respond. Their party is currently earning its lowest approval ratings ever, for good reason. It is guilty of perpetrating the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes  -- pretending President Joe Biden was OK to run for another four years.

Their efforts to brand Donald Trump a threat to Democracy were a bust and their leadership is in disarray. They deserve every minute they serve in political purgatory.

A former communications director for Kamala Harris says Democrats "have got to burn down our image." He’s right.  But then what?

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Vladimir Putin’s plan to outlast Joe Biden and an exhausted West has run into an unpleasant surprise – Donald Trump is surrounding himself with pro-Ukrainian hardliners.

Trump appears more willing than Biden ever was to throttle the Russian economy, if that is what it takes to force the Kremlin to accept peace on “America First” terms.

A new mood of relief – not yet optimism – is taking hold among Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers in Kyiv. Europe’s diplomats are starting to wonder whether a Trump 2.0 presidency might not be such a bad outcome after all, at least when it comes to dealing with Russia.

“It is now absolutely clear that Trump is not going to throw Ukraine under a bus,” said Prof Alan Riley, a regional expert at the Atlantic Council.

Trump’s advisers have persuaded him, by the odd “Socratic method” that shapes policy at Mar-a-Lago, that a shabby American retreat from Ukraine would be orders of magnitude worse than Biden’s humiliation in Afghanistan, and also that the first line of defense against China lies in the Donbas.

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Senate Democrats who are considering holding up the confirmations of President Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments might want to rethink that course of action.

The president recently threatened to adjourn Congress so he can make recess appointments for some of his nominees.

This move would be unprecedented and would likely meet with a chorus of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left. However, it appears Trump is willing to make this gambit, according to CBS News.

The president has been eager to get the members of his cabinet confirmed. So far, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been the only official confirmed. The Senate is still set to vote on Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, and John Ratcliffe for CIA Director.

Democrats have been slow-walking the process for Ratcliffe and could do the same for the other two nominees, according to CBS News.

There are questions as to whether Trump has the authority to adjourn Congress.

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President Donald Trump was so busy on his first day in office that it’s been a challenge to cover everything that he did.

The best way to know which are the best ones to discuss is to look at the way Democrats are reacting to them. His pardon of J6 prisoners was a big one; they’re really up in arms about that.

Another one was his executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants in the United States. Now, Democrat attorneys general from 22 states are suing over the executive order.

The Democrat attorneys general and immigrant rights advocates say the question of birthright citizenship is settled law and that while presidents have broad authority, they are not kings.

“The president cannot, with a stroke of a pen, write the 14th Amendment out of existence, period,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said.

These challenges are doomed to fail.

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