WASHINGTON — In what would be a political revival for the ages, Donald Trump said that moments after he is sworn in next month, he will present himself as something particularly irrelevant: a unifier.
The theme of his inaugural speech? “Unity,” he told Kristen Welker, moderator of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” in a recent interview.
“That will make you happy: unity,” he said. “It will be a message of unity.”
What this means in practice is, for now, an enigma. Trump came to power in 2016 thanks to a divided electorate. He lost the White House four years later and won it back last month by delivering much the same uncompromising message in the same blunt terms.
At 78, Trump is not about to reinvent himself and has given no signs that he is rethinking the polarizing positions he has taken on mass deportations or pardoning those who have taken stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress was counting the election. votes certifying Joe Biden’s victory.
He remains clearly and openly bitter about how he claims he was wronged by judges, prosecutors, Democratic officials and the media. In the interview in which he called for unity, he pointed the finger at House members who investigated the Jan. 6 attack and said they should be jailed.
“We’re not in a time of happiness and rejoicing,” Steve Bannon, a senior White House adviser during Trump’s first term, said in an interview. “Kamala Harris”politics of joy‘ failed. For what? Because the American experience is not happy at the moment. This is why Trump won a landslide victory.”
Yet some Trump advisers say he sincerely wants to bridge the political chasm. They said he is in a unique position to do so now that he has run his final campaign and hopes to cement a favorable place in history.
Something unexpected happened in the November 5 election. Voting blocs that had previously shunned Trump gave him a new look. He has accumulated winnings among Hispanic and black voters in key states that are normally part of the Democratic coalition since he won the popular vote for the first time in three attempts.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted after the election found that most Americans approved of Trump’s plans for the future. Although a majority doubted that Trump could broker détente between red and blue America, a larger share had warmer feelings toward him than at the end of the 2016 and 2020 elections.
“Having defeated the Democratic Party in Congress and won the popular vote and the electoral vote, I think he sees here a major opportunity for bipartisanship and breakthroughs,” said Dick Morris, Trump’s informal political adviser over the years. . and former campaign advisor to Bill Clinton. “And I think he feels that people are exhausted by the conflict on both sides and that there is a real chance here for him to open a new front.”
John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, said it would be a mistake to dismiss out of hand his call for national rapprochement.
“As a businessman, Trump is not a typical politician,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “When he tells you something, he is very direct and you have to take him at his word.
“He’s going to try to unify the country,” McLaughlin continued. “Trump will only have one term. There will be opposition against him. But he would like to have a historic presidency and accomplish more for the country.
Bringing together a fractured nation is a goal that recent presidents have shared and none have achieved. Americans are in a bad mood: worried about the future and unhappy with political leadership, according to polls. One of the few points of convergence is the collective conviction that the country’s political system is broken, surveys show.
Biden spoke of “unity” almost a dozen times in his 2021 inaugural address, yet two-thirds of Americans now believe the country has become more polarized since he took office, a Monmouth University Survey find.
For Trump, a starting point might be to clarify what he means when he says he wants to narrow the political divide.
In his mind, does this mean his rivals should quell their political objections and line up behind his agenda? Or does it mean he will compromise with Democratic lawmakers and end attacks on those who challenge him?
“No one has ever made a fortune betting on Donald Trump to do the right thing, because he never does,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a think tank center-left.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition, said in a statement: “President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election. He will unify the country through success.
With millions watching live, the inauguration would be the obvious opportunity for Trump to commit to healing, rather than stoking national divisions.
Every president hopes that at least part of his inaugural address will be memorable. Abraham Lincoln’s two speeches ending the Civil War reached poetic heights. Ronald Reagan’s 1981 speech set the tone for the new administration: “In today’s crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; the government is the problem.
Trump’s first inaugural speech is best remembered for the term “American carnage.” After finishing, a perplexed former President George W. Bush remarked, “That was some weird shit.”
Bannon recommended that Trump try something new this time — a move that could unite the right, left and center given the intense dissatisfaction with the lawmakers who will be sitting on the risers directly behind him .
“The only thing I would recommend to President Trump, if he wants to unify the country, is to rotate the podium halfway through the speech, to face the political class in Washington, D.C., sitting in the stands and read them the riot act,'” Bannon said. “Tell them things are going to change, there’s a new sheriff in town. Then turn around and finish your speech to the American people. This will unify the country.
Often, the lofty prose of an inaugural address is quickly forgotten in the helter-skelter race to get the new presidency off the ground.
The ultimate test won’t be so much the words Trump speaks from the teleprompter as the actions he takes over the next four years, analysts say.
Ted Widmer, a speechwriter in the Clinton White House and now a history professor at the City University of New York, said in an interview: “If ‘unity’ were followed by real policies that promote Unity – like bringing Democrats into his cabinet and working with Democrats in Congress on legislation that meets the needs and wants of many different types of Americans – would be great. But no one expects it. It’s already slash and burn, and he’s not even president yet. He is content to appoint extremists to his cabinet.”