Monday, a little after Noon, Donald John Trump took the oath of office and became President of the United States for the second time. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts administered the oath. Trump becomes the third president to take the oath without placing his hand on a bible. The other two were Calvin Coolidge and Thomas Jefferson, which suggests that Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, had a secular, rather than Christian, nation in mind.
But there was Melania Trump, looking for all the world like a mortician about to pray over the dearly departed, holding not one, but two bibles, one given to Trump by his grandmother when he was a boy; the other, the Abraham Lincoln Bible. He ignored both.
Of course, if the second-time-around First Lady had been holding the God Bless the USA Bible that Trump is hawking for $59.99, she might have succeeded in getting her husband to do what most others in his situation have done.
I will not say much about Trump’s dark and scary Second Inaugural Address — 2,885 words — except to suggest it was a long redux of his First Inaugural Address, the one about American Carnage. This time around, listening to his SciFi-ish monotone describing an American Wasteland, you could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to George Orwell’s Big Brother deliver lie after lie to the citizen-slaves of Oceana. One of the highlights of the speech was when Trump, the MAGA Messiah, declared he’d been “saved by God to make America great again.”
Although Trump’s lies were legion, they were nothing compared to the two, rambling, off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness, devoid-of-reality, rally talks he gave later in the day to his avid fans, first downstairs in the Capital’s Emancipation Hall and later in the Capital One Arena.
All that talk would have tired anyone, but Trump’s day wasn’t finished. In his first post on Truth Social following his inauguration, written in the middle of the night, he got to work firing people, just as Project 2025 said he would.
Our first day in the White House is not over yet! My Presidential Personnel Office is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.
Let this serve as Official Notice of Dismissal for these 4 individuals, with many more, coming soon:
Jose Andres from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars, and Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council—YOU’RE FIRED!
He hasn’t forgotten his Apprentice days, has he?
Mark Milley, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in for double-barreled treatment, however. There is a hall in the Pentagon where portraits of former Joint Chiefs hang. About a half hour after Trump was sworn in, Milley’s was removed.
When asked by reporters why Milley’s portrait was taken down, Pentagon officials declined to comment. Voice of America’s Carla Babb talked to the painters who patched up the holes where the portrait had been hanging. She reported they said they were doing as told and had not been given a reason.
Except, I think we know the reason. The relationship between Trump and Milley had been fraught. Milley was a soldier, not a Trump yes-man. Trump criticized Milley for US failures in Afghanistan, calling him a “loser,” and called for the former top general to be “tried for treason” in response to his efforts to ensure nuclear and geopolitical stability after the insurrection of January 6th, 2021.
Writing in their book, Peril, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa said Milley made a phone call to Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng on 8 January in the wake of the Capitol siege.
The January call came amid a heightened sense of urgency because the January 6th insurrection “had not only stirred up China but also caused Russia, Iran, as well as other nations to go on high alert to monitor the American military and political events in the United States,” the book says.
For his part, after retiring, Milley said Trump was infit for the office of president, along with hundreds of other former high-ranking officers. Trump did not forget that; he never forgets a criticism of any kind — neither does he forgive. Perhaps it was a good idea that Milley was one of the people Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned before heading out the door.
Speaking of the Pentagon, the Senate Armed Services Committee, along strict party lines, has approved the nomination of Pete Hegseth to move to the Senate for a final confirmation vote as Secretary of Defense, despite senators having received a damning affidavit from Hegseth’s sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, who is married to the nominee’s brother Nathaniel. In the affidavit, Danielle Hegseth asserts that Hegseth’s second wife, Samantha, whom he divorced, “feared for her personal safety” during their marriage and often hid in a closet. Danielle stated that Samantha also had a plan to text a code word that meant she wanted someone to fly to Minnesota to help her.
This will probably not matter in the new Trump world. The atavistic Hegseth, with zero qualifications or experience, as well as questionable morality, but with a war-fighting Spartan warrior mentality, will likely be confirmed by Donald Trump’s lap dog Senators, none of whom, as of Wednesday morning, have indicated any reticence to give him their vote. When he’s confirmed, I don’t think he’ll be countermanding the order to remove Milley’s portrait.
He might order it to be burned in public.