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Inaugurations are, by definition, historic. But I can’t think of one more eventful, newsy, or just plain weird than Donald Trump’s sequel to the “American carnage” goat rodeo of 2017. Look no further than the fact that 45/47 delivered, in effect, two separate inaugural addresses: the scripted (and decidedly low-energy) official rendition in the Capitol Rotunda, followed by the grievance-laden, backward-looking screed he uncorked a few minutes later to supporters in the Capitol Visitor Center. The second, free-form version felt more familiar and far more authentic, festooned as it was with conspiracy theories and alternative facts that, in the president’s own telling, J.D. Vance and Melania had talked him out of including. A few hours later—in the lull between the early afternoon events at the Capitol and Trump’s indoor inaugural “parade” at Capitol One Arena, which somehow managed to combine the aesthetics of a UFC fight night and a wannabe-royal procession, complete with the blaring of trumpets—I sat down my longtime pal and MSNBC colleague Joe Scarborough to talk about the festivities in D.C. and the commencement of Trump 2.0 for my Impolitic podcast. Illustrating the risks of being overtaken by events on such a big news day—or, really, any day involving Trump—our conversation took place several hours before The Donald made his most consequential first-day moves: the pardons and commutations he issued to nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection, including those convicted of seditious conspiracy and those who assaulted members of the Capitol Police. Even so, Scarborough’s take on what we saw yesterday was typically sharp and shrewd. In this condensed and lightly edited transcript, we break down the Jekyll and Hyde speeches, the tableau of tech billionaires at the Capitol, and the post-election foray to Mar-a-Lago by Joe and his wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, that stirred up so much angst and agita late last year.

John Heilemann: Given the strangeness of the past two inaugurations, I guess this one was normal by comparison. But it all felt lethargic to me, and the pair of speeches he gave in quick succession were pretty odd. What did you make of what we just saw? Joe Scarborough: Even though I’ve known Donald Trump a long time, and even though, yes, friends and neighbors, Mika and I went down and spoke with him for about an hour and a half in November, I cannot predict what he’s going to do tomorrow. What I saw when we were talking to him at Mar-a-Lago, and what I’ve seen since, is a guy who—it’s not that his heart’s not in it, but that he knows what notes he has to play to keep the fans with him on X. So when he went downstairs [to the Capitol Visitor Center] and gave his X speech, he had to play the hits. Alright, here’s “Rhinestone Cowboy”: The 2020 election was stolen, Liz Cheney, blah blah blah. This is just speculation, but I think he’s trying to figure out, How do I accomplish things? How do I get firmly cemented in the Presidents Club? Am I always going to be the outsider that nobody wants to talk to in official Washington? I think he’s trying to figure out that balance: how to get the respect and approval of [the establishment] while keeping his base with him.

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One thing that stood out from the speed-metal version of the speech was when Trump said “we’re gonna see a lot of action” on the J-6 jailbirds. And there’s reporting now that the pardons are being prepared as we speak. He also blamed Nancy Pelosi for that day. What upside does he see in continually going back to January 6, and even contemplating pardoning people who beat cops with flagpoles and baseball bats? I really don’t know. As far as ranking things [Trump has done] that were the most deeply disturbing to me as an American, what happened on January 6 would be at the top of the list. I guess it’s one more example of him feeling like he needed to play the hits for the hardcore MAGA people who were downstairs. But I just sat there watching him today going, Why is he doing this? What political advantage does it give him to look back and talk about that instead of what he wants to do moving forward? I’ll never understand it. Another thing that caught my ear was in his official address, when he reeled off that implicit “America sucks” litany at the tap: Our sovereignty will be reclaimed, our justice system will be rebalanced, our safety will be restored, we’ll be proud, prosperous, and free. I know people are anxious about the future, and they’re right to be. But has America really lost its sovereignty? At a time when crime rates are dropping, are we really systematically unsafe? Are we really not proud, prosperous, and free? Sovereignty is just one of those catch-all phrases that rings the bell of a lot of members of his base. His talk about fighting fewer wars goes to the party’s wicked isolationist streak. His talk about the “national emergency” at the border, about D.E.I., about there being only two genders, male and female—those things ring a lot of bells, too. About halfway through his speech, I thought to myself that this is the type of speech someone would give running in a Republican primary to be a member of Congress from Northwest Florida, one of the most conservative areas in America. What struck me was, he was delivering this speech as president of the United States. I’m not saying any of this is right. I’m saying that Donald Trump has figured out how to ring the political bell of almost 50 percent of Americans. And I think it’s remarkable how Democrats have allowed a speech that would have been an effective speech in Northwest Florida—where I’m from, and which I lovingly call the Redneck Riviera—to become a mainstream speech because they’ve ceded all of this ground. No doubt Trump is an effective bell-ringer—but as you point out, for a little less than half of the electorate. You’d think that, at this point, if Trump really wanted to solve big problems—to make America great again, to coin a phrase—he’d realize he needs to reach beyond his base. But what I heard from him today in both versions of his inaugural was nothing but the furious stoking of the MAGA faithful. That’s the question: Is he ever going to try to get there? When he says, I’m going to give a unifying speech—is that him trying to stick his toe in the water to say, We’ve got to work together as Republicans and Democrats? It’s hard to have those sweeping grand statements when the central thesis of Trumpism is “I alone can fix it.” It’s going to be interesting how that plays itself out over the next four years. I know he and his team are reaching out to Democrats and talking about making a deal on illegal immigration and other issues. I heard talk like this in his first term on immigration and on guns, but [those didn’t happen because of] his concern about the base. So the question remains: How does Trump get to the point of getting some things done with Democrats without losing his fandom on X—which actually matters to him a great deal more than it would most politicians who control their base as much as he controls his?

At one point, Trump talked about a “corrupt establishment” that’s created a “crisis of trust.” Those themes are, I think, central to Trump’s political power. And he’s not wrong about either of them. And yet, look at the power brokers coming together [right now around Trump], aiming to use the government to achieve their own ends. Look at Elon Musk, who made most of his billions off of government contracts, look at Apple, look at everybody getting in line now [to cash in]. And then you look at this new bitcoin offering of Trump’s. So you’ve got all these extraordinary contradictions at the heart of Trumpism, the greatest of which is what we’ve been seeing play out with Steve Bannon and Elon—and, hey, you saw it just today. You had the people Bannon is saying he’s advocating for left out in the cold, while you had Elon and the richest, most powerful tech leaders on the planet all within 10 feet of Trump.

The Democratic Party has a unique opportunity here. If they get a lot of the other issues right—or, at least, if they can respond to the Republican attacks on these social issues in a more effective, more aggressive, less apologetic way—then they can talk about the ineptness of Washington leaders and elites. They can talk about the fact that the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of humankind has been since the early 1990s: the money transferred from the middle class to the richest of the rich, who are all sitting around Trump now.

So let’s talk about your and Mika’s visit to Mar-a-Lago, for which you got a metric ton of shit. On social media, yeah—and the reason I emphasize social media is because that’s the only place I got a ton of shit. Every editor, every publisher, every news person I talk to, every leader in both parties, all said, Yeah, we know why you did that. That made sense. What did he say? What did you learn? And there’s a great follow-up question: Why didn’t more people go down and do that? Why didn’t more reporters do that? That’s what reporters do! For a lot of people I talk to, there was a kind of whiplash—like, one minute they’re calling Trump a fascist, the next minute they’re going down there and kissing his ring. First of all, John, you know me. Have you ever seen me kiss someone’s ring? You can tell anybody that if they can find one person’s ring that I’ve ever kissed in my entire fucking life, you would give them however much money you want—because I don’t do that. I didn’t do it in Congress. I haven’t done it in the TV business. And I’m not doing it now. My point to people has been: They do four hours a day of live TV—you can judge for yourself how they cover Trump and the administration going forward. If they start giving him tongue baths, then they’re guilty as charged. But if they continue to do tough coverage, who cares about a trip to Mar-a-Lago? The proof will be in the pudding. And what have we done since then? Whether it was Matt Gaetz or Pete Hegseth or Kash Patel or Bobby Kennedy Jr., we’ve been hammering away nonstop—just nonstop. The whole thing is fascinating because, as you said, we do all this stuff in public. Four hours a day, 20 hours a week. And we’ve continued to do what we’ve always done. I will say, though, going back to your comment about never kissing rings: You’d kiss Paul McCartney’s ring in a hot second. Let’s be honest. I would. He’s the one exception to the rule.

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