NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.
January 20, 2025: Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, by the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington.
As with Ronald Reagan's 2nd term in 1985, it was too cold to have an outdoor ceremony for Trump's 2nd term, so it was moved into the Capitol's Rotunda, with a much smaller crowd. Of course, before anyone knew that it would be so cold, there were plans for protests, which threatened to be larger than the crowd who showed up to cheer the Inauguration. And Trump's 2017 Inauguration crowd had been a lot smaller than he'd hoped.
And so, either bowing to the cold, or bowing to his own cowardice about seeing the crowd coming to see him being too small, Trump had the ceremony moved indoors. And that turned out to be one of the less unusual things about this Inauguration ceremony.
As with his 1st Inauguration in 2017, when outgoing President Barack Obama attended, this time, outgoing President Joe Biden attended. Trump had not attended Biden's Inauguration in 2021, and had left Washington that morning.
Unlike with his 1st Inauguration, this time, Trump did not place his hand on a Bible during his Oath of Office. This had only happened twice before. In 1825, John Quincy Adams placed his hand on a law book. And in 1901, there was no Bible in the house where Theodore Roosevelt was sworn, in under emergency conditions following the assassination of William McKinley.
While he mentioned Biden, along with other distinguished attendees, at the start of his Inaugural Address, he did not pay tribute to him during the Address itself. Every incoming President had done so since Gerald Ford had asked for prayers for Richard Nixon in 1974. Even Trump had praised Obama in 2017. No praise for Biden this time.
He began:
My fellow citizens, the golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first.
Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.
And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free. America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before.
As Biden would have said, it was malarkey. America had never been less respected than it was during Trump's 1st term. Dictators from Russia to Saudi Arabia to Iran took advantage of him. The only "weaponization of the Justice Department" had been the one he ran, which Biden stopped, and whic Trump now renewed.
Among the attendees were some right-wing populists from all over the world: From parties such as Britain's Reform UK (Nigel Farage), France's National Rally, and Germany's AfD. Also in attendance were some of the world's richest and rottenest men: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin. It was an Inauguration for oligarchs: Of the rich and right-wing, by the rich and right-wing, for the rich and right-wing.
By the next day, Trump had practically handed the Administration over to Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which cut billions of dollars in spending on some of the most beneficial things the federal government had been doing. It got to the point where Musk, born in South Africa and thus ineligible for the Presidency, was being called "The Co-President." This wasn't mocking him: It was mocking Trump.
Where was I at 12:00 Noon, when he was sworn in? I was at the Essex County Courthouse, on Market Street in Newark, my parents' hometown, engaging in a one-man protest and demonstration. In front of the Courthouse, opened in 1904 with Greek-inspired columns, is a statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln, sculpted by Gutzon Borghlum, who would later design Mount Rushmore. I had recently passed my 55th Birthday, and was the age that Lincoln was when he ran for re-election in 1864, during the American Civil War.
The back of the Courthouse faces Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., formerly High Street. Across from it is an annex, the Martin Luther King Jr. Justice Building. Inscribed over its doors are words of Dr. King's: "INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE." In front is a statue of King, holding two pieces of paper, one labeled as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the other labeled as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both of which would not have become law without both his activism and the subsequent action of the federal government.
I took this picture. It had snowed in the last few days.
As it happened, it was the 3rd Monday in January, the federal holiday that honors Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, as his birthday was January 15. He was 39 years old when he was assassinated in 1968, one day after making a speech in which he said to his supporters, echoing the Biblical figure of Moses, "I've been to the mountaintop, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!"
I needed those words at that moment. Because Dr. King wasn't just speaking to black people, to African-Americans, to, as he put it in his "I Have a Dream" speech 5 years earlier, "the Negro community." He was speaking to all Americans. Even the ones who hated him for his race and for his various stands.
I walked back down Market Street to Broad Street, and stood at a spot where, on September 15, 1960, my father, a freshman at the school now known as the New Jersey Institute of Technology, reached out and offered his hand to a man in an open convertible, shaking hands in a campaign motorcade: Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. A few minutes earlier, on the Belleville stretch of Broad Street, that motorcade had passed by the building that then served as Belleville High School, and is now the town's Junior High School. My mother, a freshman there, looked out the window and saw Kennedy.
Kennedy won that 1960 election, but was assassinated less than 3 years into his term, at the age of 46. In 1965, a bust of him was installed on a column in Newark's Military Park, roughly across Broad Street from the spot where the two Johns, Pacholek of Newark and Kennedy of Boston, shook hands. (Unlike Kennedy, my father's friends never called him "Jack.")
And on this day in 2025, I crossed that street and stood before his bust, and the Lloyd Bentsen phrase came to my mind: "Donald Trump, you're no Jack Kennedy."
In 1968, doo-wop singer Dion DiMucci made a brief comeback, with a song that had been written about these three men who had been taken far too soon: "Abraham, Martin and John." I stood before their memorials that day, and I felt as though I could carry on in opposition to the tyrant who was now perverting their ideals.
The fact that Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 2 months after Dr. King, at the age of 42, and that his son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had betrayed everything the family stood for, and had accepted the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services, for which he was completely unqualified, from Trump, did not escape my notice.
Meanwhile, Trump had already survived two assassination attempts the year before, although there was evidence that both had been staged, to gain sympathy for him at times when his polling was bad. There would be more.
*
January 20, 2025 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was between rounds of Playoffs. There were 8 games in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 119-110 at Madison Square Garden. Jalen Brunson scored 34 points.
* The Charlotte Hornets beat the Dallas Mavericks, 110-105 at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte.
* The Memphis Grizzlies beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 108-106 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis.
* The New Orleans Pelicans beat the Utah Jazz, 123-119 in overtime at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. CJ McCollum led all scorers on the day with 45 points.
* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Phoenix Suns, 118-92 at the Rocket Arena in Cleveland.
* The Detroit Pistons beat the Houston Rockets, 107-96 at the Toyota Center in Houston.
* The Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 112-99 at the Intuit Dome outside Los Angeles in Inglewood,
California. Zach LaVine scored 35 points.
* And the Boston Celtics beat the Golden State Warriors, 125-85 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
And there were 9 games in the NHL:
* The New York Islanders beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 3-1 at the UBS Arena.
* The Boston Bruins beat the San Jose Sharks, 6-3 at the TD Garden in Boston.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 5-3 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
* The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 4-3 at the United Center in Chicago. Sebastian Aho scored the winning goal, with 4:01 left in overtime.
* The Minnesota Wild beat the Colorado Avalanche, 3-1 at the Ball Arena in Denver.
* The Utah Hockey Club beat the Winnipeg Jets, 5-2 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. The UHC became the Utah Mammoth the next season.
* The St. Louis Blues beat the Vegas Golden Knights, 5-4 in a shootout at the T-Mobile Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.
* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Los Angeles Kings, 5-1 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
* And the Seattle Kraken beat the Buffalo Sabres, 6-4 at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
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