What Donald Trump’s inauguration speech really means – ‘a dangerous lunatic hellbent on revenge’

Donald Trump’s second inaugural speech will do nothing to dissuade those who have real fears for the safety of the US – and the world – over the next four years. Here’s what he said – and what it meant

Donald Trump’s second inaugural speech will do nothing to dissuade those who think he’s a dangerous lunatic, hell-bent on taking revenge on his political enemies, imposing the extreme ideologies pushed by his most hardline allies and encouraging the very worst American impulses.

It was by turns bitter and self aggrandising, full of impossible promises, sinister threats and abject fantasy.

If anyone else, at any other point in history had stood up at that podium and claimed to have personally saved from an assassin’s bullet by the almighty so they could be President again, they would have been rightly branded a fruit loop.

And yet many of the great and good of the Washington establishment – not to mention some conspicuous tech billionaires – clapped politely as Trump said: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

It opened with a typically unrealistic promise: “The golden age of America begins right now.”

The opening lines were almost word for word taken from a speech given last night in Washington by Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser in Trump’s team – who has hardline – some say extremist – views on immigration and cultural issues.

Much of the content of the speech was either previewed in Miller’s speech or aligned with his worldview.

Trump’s announcement that it will be the US government’s position that there are “two genders – male and female” was also a direct lift from Miller’s speech the previous night.

Trump wasted no time before moving onto another likely pipe dream – the mass deportation of “millions and millions” of undocumented people from the United States.

He didn’t say whether the suggestion made by some Trump allies that local sheriffs would be empowered to separate children with citizenship from undocumented parents being deported.

He declared a “national emergency” at the southern border with Mexico – hoping nobody will notice that the number crossing the border is currently the lowest it’s been for years.

And he said he’d use the “Alien Enemies act of 1798” to mount a crackdown on gangs.

That act allows the president to imprison or deport non-citizens who come from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime.

The last time it was used by a president was after Pearl Harbour, when the US government rounded up thousands of innocent Japanese, Italian and German men and imprisoned them in camps.

His voice – and his expression – took an even more sinister tone as he turned his fire on the “radical and corrupt establishment” who “extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.”

It was something of an awkward moment, given most of the people he was talking about – the Clintons, Barack Obama and Joe Biden – were sitting just over his right shoulder.

“My election is a mandate to completely reverse a horrible betrayal – and to give people back their wealth, their democracy and their freedom,” he said. “From this time on America’s decline is over”

Perhaps the least surprising section of the speech saw him tell the world how great he is, for a very long time.

“It is my hope that our recent presidential election will be remembered as the greatest and most consequential election in the history of our country,” he said, before promising to rename a sea and a mountain – neither for any adequately explained reason.

And maybe the most surprising was when he announced plans to invade not Greenland, but Mars.

He said: “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”

The phrase “manifest destiny” has deep meaning in American history – and was used to justify the Westward expansion in the 19th Century, despite the consequences for Native American people.

It’s the belief that that American settlers were “destined” to expand – and that this belief was both obvious and certain.

And apparently that also applies to Mars.

How much of this was included because Elon Musk was in the second row behind the President we will never know, but the erratic tech billionaire applauded it.

Finally, if you felt there was something unusual about the end of the speech – something missing from his regular speeches, an unsettling moment of eerie calm – you were right.

This was one of very few public speeches Donald Trump has delivered in the last four years that didn’t end with him dancing to Village People’s YMCA.