Trump’s inaugural speech: What experts say to look for
WASHINGTON — Having smashed convention at every step of his unorthodox path to the presidency, Donald Trump will stand before the world Friday as heir to a 228-year tradition handed down from George Washington, in a setting steeped in the most cherished rituals of American democracy.
Trump’s speech will be the liftoff point of his journey in office, defining its contours and tone, and setting course for the nation.
Trump offered a preview Wednesday, tweeting a photograph of himself holding a pen above a legal pad as he gazed sternly, from a bizarre tableau of Persian tiles and an eagle sculpture, meant to show him writing the speech himself from his “Winter White House” at Mar el Lago.
“This inaugural address will be carefully watched around the world, and the slightest little language usage could set his administration off on a very bad course,” said SFSU political science Professor Robert Smith.
Trump takes office with a record low approval rating, after losing the popular vote by a record 2.8 million votes.
“If he wants to appear to be more presidential, he needs to try to reach out to all of America, not just to his more conservative followers,” said David Caputo, president emeritus of Pace University in New York.
Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump will be “philosophical,” giving “a very personal and sincere statement about his vision for the country.”
“We need to see a clear message as to what his priorities are,” said James Thurber, a presidential scholar at American University.
Trump campaigned by holding rallies where he rambled extemporaneously, dropping insults, boasts and prevarications along the way that would have sunk a normal politician.
Trump has alarmed foreign leaders around the globe with some of his statements, upsetting decades of U.S. policy on China, nuclear proliferation, NATO and other areas.
“All of us are scared and so are the Europeans and so are the Asians,” said Richard Abrams, professor emeritus of American history at UC Berkeley.
The interesting question, Caputo said, is whether “the Trump presidency is a transition to a new type of president and a new way the executive branch functions in the United States.”