God saved me to make US great again: President Trump returns

President Donald Trump pledged to rescue America from what he described as years of betrayal and decline in his inaugural address on Monday, prioritising a crackdown on illegal immigration and portraying himself as a national saviour chosen by God.

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All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will

begin the process of returning millions of criminal aliens back

to the places they came from. — Donald Trump, US President

“First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border,” he said. “All illegal entry will be immediately halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places they came from.” The speech echoed many of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017 when he spoke darkly of the “American carnage” of crime and job loss that, he said, had ravaged the country.

Welcome home: Biden

Joe Biden greeted his successor Donald Trump at the White House on Monday with the message “welcome home”. When Biden was waiting for the arrival of Trump, he was asked if he had written a letter to Trump. He replied, “Yes.”

PM Modi greets Prez

Greeting Donald Trump, PM Modi posted on X, “Congratulations my dear friend on your historic inauguration as the 47th President of the US! I look forward to working closely together once again, to benefit both our countries, and to shape a better future for the world.”

Biden pardons siblings

Outgoing President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned his siblings and their spouses, saying his family had been “subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics”.

Trump, 78, took the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend” the US Constitution at the Capitol, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His Vice-President, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.

Trump will be the first felon to occupy the White House after a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.

Trump intended to sign a raft of executive actions in his first hours as President, incoming White House officials said on Monday, including 10 focused on border security and immigration, his top priority.

In addition to declaring an emergency, the President will send armed troops there and resume a policy forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their US court dates, officials told reporters. He will also seek to end so-called birthright citizenship for US-born children whose parents lack legal status, a move some legal scholars have said would be unconstitutional.

The inauguration completes a triumphant comeback for a political disruptor who survived two impeachment trials, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts and an indictment for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you,” Trump said, before referring to the assassin’s bullet that grazed his ear in July. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

The ceremony was moved inside the Capitol due to the cold, four years after a mob of Trump supporters breached the building, a symbol of American democracy, in an unsuccessful effort to forestall Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden, 82.

Biden and outgoing Vice-President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, were on hand inside the Capitol’s Rotunda, along with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, arrived with her husband Bill, but Obama’s wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.

Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favour with the incoming administration, including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump’s family.

Trump, the first US President since the 19th century to win a second term after losing the White House, has said he would pardon “on Day One” many of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack.

He skipped Biden’s inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.