The primary nice picture of the second Donald Trump administration emerged final evening at a Washington, D.C., basketball area, the place the soon-to-be-inaugurated president danced with the Village Folks. After Trump completed considered one of his traditional stem-winding speeches, he was joined by 5 hunks of disco infamy: the bare-armed development employee, the denim-crotched cowboy, the chaps-wearing biker, the befringed Native American chief, and the vinyl-booted cop. Together with his go well with and pendulous crimson tie, Trump appeared like he was within the band, like simply one other shade in a rainbow of satirical American masculinity.
The president’s affinity for the Village Folks’s music used to look trollish, however now it’s simply logical. The band shaped within the Nineteen Seventies when two French producers, considered one of them homosexual, put out a casting name that learn “Macho Sorts Wished: Should Dance and Have a Moustache.” Right now these founders are lifeless, however the band’s frontman, Victor Willis, is alive to disclaim, at each likelihood, that “YMCA” is a queer anthem. Over the previous few years, he’s additionally moved from condemning the Trump marketing campaign’s use of the tune to embracing it, partially as a result of, as he just lately defined on Fb, “The monetary advantages have been nice.” The Trumpified Village Folks now undertaking what appeared to be the better theme of this previous inauguration weekend: an odd new dream of American unity, washed of something however beauty distinction, joined in spectacle and opportunism.
At his earlier inauguration, Trump had bother reserving performers to have fun the outcomes of a brutally divisive, intently contested election. Headliners included the light rock band 3 Doorways Down, a drummer well-known for a cameo in The Matrix Reloaded, and the late, game-for-whatever Toby Keith (who informed me in 2017, “The president of the frickin’ United States asks you to do one thing and you’ll go, you must go as an alternative of being a jack-off”). The festivities felt confused and limp.
This inauguration, in contrast, adopted an election during which nearly each demographic had moved to the proper. Trump now has an enormous tent, so he’s going to placed on a circus. The rosters for the inaugural galas weren’t fairly A-list when it comes to musicians who matter proper now, however they did function recognizable names throughout a variety of genres and constituencies—the rapper Nelly; the reggaeton star Anuel AA; numerous right-leaning, country-aligned stalwarts equivalent to Jason Aldean and Child Rock. The best reversal was for Snoop Dogg, who as soon as made enjoyable of rappers who palled round with the president however now appeared joyful to DJ for tuxedoed bros celebrating the primary crypto president.
The Capitol Rotunda, the place the inauguration ceremony was moved due to freezing climate, made the massive tent really feel intimate. Because the faces of America’s previous appeared down from busts, the ceiling painted with E Pluribus Unum, numerous oddities of the current—equivalent to Melania’s modern, eye-hiding Hamburglar hat—immediately appeared historic. The chamber was so small that a lot of the viewers watched from an overflow room; the Democrats (together with 4 earlier presidents and their spouses, sans Michelle Obama) had been scrunched up near the Republicans, as if at a courthouse marriage ceremony. Behind Trump stood crucial new members of his coalition: the tech moguls Elon Musk, Tim Prepare dinner, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
“The complete nation is quickly unifying,” Trump mentioned in his speech, earlier than itemizing the numerous demographics—Black, Latino, outdated, younger, and so forth—who’d helped ship his victory. The speech had its darkish passages, but it surely was no redux of 2017’s “American carnage” rant. Fairly, Trump strung collectively constructive, forward-looking statements in regards to the nation’s oncoming golden age—an limitless summer season on the “Gulf of America,” with out crime or battle, and our flag waving on Mars. He was adopted by a bar joke’s value of benedictions—from a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Black evangelical pastor. The latter, Lorenzo Sewell, spoke with rumbling flamboyance, calling for freedom to ring “from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire” to “the curvaceous hilltops of California.”
As pageantry, the ceremony was efficient. The opera singer Christopher Macchio bellowed “Oh, America” over navy drums, with a touch of ’80s-metal righteousness. The repetitious nature of the president’s speech, stating and restating visions of prosperity and peace, served to distract from the varied teams which will quickly endure: hundreds of thousands of immigrants he vowed to spherical up; trans and gender-nonconforming individuals navigating the federal government’s strict new definitions of gender; the “radical and corrupt institution” whose leaders had been sitting inches away, politely squinting at a person who’d vowed retribution towards his rivals.
The spell created by pomp and circumstance broke a bit for one efficiency in the course of the ceremony. Carrie Underwood, the 41-year-old American Idol star and nation hitmaker, walked out to sing “America the Stunning.” One thing went incorrect along with her backing music, and he or she smiled in silence for practically two minutes. Was this an omen? Would Trump’s promised golden age instantly change into glitchy and underwhelming? However then Underwood informed the Rotunda to simply sing the phrases alongside along with her. Everybody obliged—together with Joe Biden and, by the tip of the tune, Kamala Harris. Democracy, it’s properly understood, has been present process a trial. However, begrudgingly or not, the nation’s nonetheless collectively.