Donald Trump brings ‘A-plus treatment’

Country singer Carrie Underwood got her own dose of the awkwards when the backing track for America the Beautiful failed to start playing.

After Underwood was introduced, the room waited in silence for nearly two minutes until an official approached her, and she said: “I can just sing it.” She did so a cappella, and sounded great.

(It just shows no event is too big or important for technical gremlins to rear their heads. Those with a fondness for such glitches might remember the 1996 National Tree Lighting ceremony where Patti LaBelle was forced to butcher her way through This Christmas without a teleprompter or backing singers, in front of then-president Bill Clinton.)

But it was Trump’s second speech of the day, to dignitaries, donors and supporters in an overflow room in the Capitol, that flicked the switch to vaudeville.

Unchained from formalities and protocols, and unscripted, the president went into stand-up comedy mode, telling the room they were “a younger, far more beautiful audience than the one I just spoke to”.

He lamented that he thought he “blew it” by ordering the inauguration indoors for fear of cold weather.

After all, the sun was shining in Washington. “Then I went outside, and we were freezing,” he said. “You would have been very unhappy. The sun is very deceptive.”

The wind was blowy, and when seeing Biden off in the Marine One chopper, Melania’s hat was caught in the updraught. “She almost blew away, we almost lost her,” Trump said. “She was being elevated off the ground.”

We were informed the first lady and Vice President J. D. Vance counselled Trump to exclude some “extremely controversial” things from his official inauguration speech, such as his promise to pardon the January 6 rioters and a long list of familiar grievances about Nancy Pelosi, the Biden administration, the media and voter fraud.

Trump proceeded to rant and ramble about all of those matters, and repeated his false claim the 2020 election was “totally rigged”. There was a long, digression-filled tribute to Texas governor Greg Abbott, who was in the audience, and another round of jabs at “the fake news” and political pollsters.

All the while, Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and others stood awkwardly on stage, Johnson with his hands in his pockets and eyes frequently on the floor. “Four years of this,” his face seemed to say.

Melania and Vance’s wife Usha had taken seats; Trump later said the first lady’s feet were aching in her high heels.

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Trump spoke in the overflow room for just over half an hour; a few minutes longer than his official inaugural address. Meanwhile, a split screen on CBS showed that in the time Trump was speaking, Biden had landed at Andrews Air Force Base, given a farewell speech, boarded a 747 and taken off for California.

The new president, however, was proud of his efforts. “I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump told the overflow crowd. “I gave you the A-plus treatment.”

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