admin
In today’s newsletter, scenes from inside the Rotunda. Plus:
Antonia Hitchens
Reporting from Washington, D.C.
When I arrived early this morning to watch Donald Trump take his oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda, a military helicopter was waiting on the east side of the building to take Joe Biden and his family away after the ceremony finished. The National Mall was empty. Emancipation Hall served as an overflow room of sorts, where the event would be streamed on large screens. I walked by Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who, despite having a number of M.L.K. Day events on his schedule, left Manhattan in the middle of the night for a surprise trip to Washington. Inside the Rotunda, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln choir was practicing its musical prelude. Ushers were finalizing the seating arrangements—I stood next to a row reserved for Witkoffs. Nearby: Karoline Leavitt, Alina Habba, and Stephen Miller. Elon Musk was one of the first to arrive on the dais. He occasionally looked up, apparently studying the ceiling. The theme of the Inauguration was announced: “Our Enduring Democracy.” A cameraman capturing the official feed of the pre-ceremony entrances cautioned me to stay out of his way. “This camera’s going around the world,” he said. “Any time it moves they see you in Afghanistan.” Members of the House and Senate were filing in. Mark Zuckerberg, Tucker Carlson, and Shou Chew, the C.E.O. of TikTok, were on the dais; Marie Gluesenkamp Perez came in wearing a green baseball cap. It felt like a mini version of a sedate Trump rally—except that Democrats had to attend. The room was flooded with sunlight and the lights from TV cameras. “Is Bezos here yet?” someone asked, craning their neck. Someone else proposed that Trump had the best-looking Cabinet to date.
I stood watching the ceremony next to several officers of the Capitol Police. Handed out alongside the official program was an etiquette manual. (“Do not move seat cards.”) Almost everyone took selfies; as Trump’s speech dragged on, the man in front of me was playing a game of chess on his iPhone. I slipped out just before the ceremony was over. On the basement floor of the Capitol, it felt like a normal day. I heard one member of the kitchen staff telling another that, upstairs, Trump was being inaugurated. I wandered over to look out on National Statuary Hall, where Trump would host a white-tablecloth luncheon. Waiters were standing completely still, holding bottles of wine. Guests began to arrive. While they mingled, Trump went down to Emancipation Hall, where his overflow crowd waited, and gave the speech he seemed to have wanted to give at the Inauguration. There was no teleprompter this time. Throughout the Capitol, on TVs playing C-SPAN, the newly sworn in President was talking about a rigged election.
A Longtime Biden Adviser Gives a Final Defense of Bidenomics
Source photograph by Tom Brenner / Getty
Jared Bernstein, the outgoing chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, says that Donald Trump is inheriting a strong economy—it has “outperformed even the most optimistic forecasts over the last few years,” Bernstein noted—but with less freedom to maneuver than he had during his first term. John Cassidy reports »
More Top Stories
Daily Cartoon
“Come to think of it, I’d love to contribute to the coronation fund.”
Cartoon by Paul Noth
More Fun & Games
P.S. To honor Martin Luther King, Jr., Day today, revisit Renata Adler’s piece, from 1965, about the thirty-thousand person march from Selma to Montgomery, led by King, which galvanized President Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the nation. “The marchers, who had five days and four nights in which to talk, tended for the most part to avoid discussions of principle,” she writes, “apparently in the hope that their good will, their sense of solidarity, and the sheer pageantry of the occasion would resolve matters at some symbolic level.”
Hannah Jocelyn contributed to this edition.
