Trump actions to speak louder than his speech

WASHINGTON — After a campaign unlike any other, President Donald Trump delivered an inaugural address unlike virtually any other, a populist declaration aimed directly at the power structure of Washington along with a determined expression of the “America First” message that carried him to the White House.

With members of Congress — embodiments of the elite he ran against — sitting behind him, the new president put everyone in power on notice, Republicans and Democrats alike.

He spoke not as the leader of his party or as a politician with a conventional ideological agenda.

Instead he spoke as the outsider he is, a businessman-turned-politician who is now a president with the power to set his own agenda.

The priorities he highlighted Friday were the same as those he championed during the campaign, some traditionally Republican but others that would challenge the orthodoxy of the party whose nomination he seized through a skillfully hostile takeover.

Republicans have been gleeful at the prospect of having full control of the executive and legislative branches of government and, therefore, the power to try to enact a conservative agenda that would undo as much of what President Barack Obama did as possible.

Perhaps they will get their wish, but Trump did not speak Friday as a conventional Republican. He spoke as Donald Trump, who defied conventions to capture the Republican nomination and the White House.

He promised a massive infrastructure program. He pledged policies on trade, taxes, immigration and foreign policy that would benefit American workers above all others. Notably, he did not mention nominating conservative justices to the Supreme Court or repealing the Affordable Care Act, the overriding priority of many Republicans and a goal that he and Vice President Mike Pence have said they share.

The language of Trump’s speech was stark and often dark, similar in tone to the address he delivered when he accepted the Republican nomination this past summer in Cleveland.

He described a country of shuttered and rusted factories, rampant crime, neighborhoods infested with gangs and drugs. He decried the damage to middle-class families by policies that he said took their wealth and spread it abroad.

The speech probably will be remembered most for its tone and especially for two words that summed the portrait of the nation Trump vowed to turn around: “American carnage.”

Trump said he would govern with all Americans in mind, but he directed his words mostly at the tens of millions of people who heard his call during the campaign and responded.

His election, he said, means that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now.”

His remarks about foreign policy were rather briefer than those in some previous inaugural addresses and notable for the tone he struck. He said throughout the campaign that Americans had been played for suckers by other nations and repeated that assessment Friday.

“We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon,” he said.

All countries, he said, should be free to act in their own interests, and he made clear that his interest could result in a more insular approach than many of his predecessors.

Was that a description of his America First approach or a signal to others — beginning with Russia — that the United States would not intercede in disputes elsewhere?

He pledged to reinforce old alliances, despite repeated denigrations of NATO over many months, but he also vowed to form new ones with the goal of destroying the Islamic State.

The conundrum with the new president is that words don’t always matter. He can talk one way one day and a different way another. Only when he begins to take action will it become apparent how faithful his policies are to the rhetoric of his inaugural address.

The other unknown is how effective he will be in leveraging the power of the presidency to get his way. He will meet resistance from many places, from Democrats on much of what he wants to do, from Republicans on some of his priorities that counteract conservative principles, and from a swath of the public that has yet to accept him as their president.

But the message of his inaugural address was clear: If he begins to get his way, Washington and much else will change and change dramatically.

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY Donald Trump waits to be introduced Friday at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol before his inauguration ceremony. In his speech, he echoed many themes from his campaign.