President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address was a policy-oriented message ‘of hope and unity,’ experts said.
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, called Trump’s address ‘substantive’ when it came to outlining the president’s agenda for the next four years.
‘Trump was policy-specific from beginning to end,’ Roberts said. ‘And I think that that’s something that’s going to be remembered as a distinguishing characteristic of the speech, because people, Americans waking up tomorrow watching the news, reading the news, will remember that Trump articulated a playbook.’
‘The golden Age of America begins right now,’ Trump said as he delivered his inaugural address on Capitol Hill Monday.
‘From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world,’ he continued. ‘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.’
Trump notably bashed ‘the vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department’ as well as the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of both foreign and domestic issues while both the former president and vice president looked on. Trump specifically noted the North Carolina hurricane disasters and the recent wildfires ravaging Southern California.
‘We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people,’ Trump said.
Trump’s policy-specific speech was ‘very important right now because of all of the policy failures of the Biden-Harris regime,’ Roberts told Fox News Digital on Monday. ‘And I know from the kind of work that Heritage does, not just in D.C. but in states around the country, that Trump’s base and a lot of the independent voters who voted for him this time around [were] looking for a policy plan, and he articulated it.’
‘President Trump has officially kicked off a new chapter for America,’ Jessica Anderson, president of the conservative super PAC Sentinel Action Fund, told Fox News Digital on Monday. ‘His speech was one of hope and unity as he set the tone for the next four years of prosperity, security and strength.’
Both Roberts and Anderson noted that Trump’s address also was a turning point in definitively announcing that a new administration was taking over the White House.
‘As President Trump made clear, he is not going to waste any time getting to work for the American people, and he has already teed up dozens of executive orders on everything from securing the border to properly defining gender,’ Anderson said.
‘It was not gratuitous in his criticism of his political opponents,’ Roberts said. ‘But you didn’t have to do much reading between the lines to understand that the sheriff is back in town. He’s going to take this country back.’
Trump’s speech also emphasized his top priority in making America ‘a nation that is proud, prosperous and free,’ echoing sentiments of the New Frontier theme.
‘We are one people, one family and one glorious nation under God,’ Trump said. ‘So to every parent who dreams for their child and every child who dreams for their future, I am with you. I will fight for you and I will win for you. We are going to win like never before.’
Roberts said, ‘I think Trump put his finger on something that’s, right now, going to be an underappreciated part of his legacy, and that is a president of American innovation.’
‘In other words, making America great again is bringing American manufacturing and economic vitality back to a level where the innovation is so tremendous you can’t even comprehend as you sit here what it’s going to be.’
Roberts said such an invocation of the ‘real spirit of America’ in Trump’s speech indicated ‘bringing American manufacturing and economic vitality back’ during his second administration, which was a theme that Roberts said both Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy incorporated into their own inaugural addresses.