What to watch for in Trump’s inaugural address

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President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 7 news conference in Mar-a-Lago got me thinking about his upcoming inaugural speech, on Jan. 20. What should we watch for?

To begin, consider Trump’s first inaugural address, delivered on Jan. 20, 2017. This is the speech that’s sometimes characterized as the “American carnage” address, during which Trump promises that the American hellscape he describes elsewhere in the speech “stops right here and stops right now.”

Trump portrays an America in 2017 where “mothers and children are trapped in poverty,” with national landscapes marred by “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones,” and where “crime and gangs and drugs” have “stolen too many lives.”

This column isn’t about whether Trump was accurately portraying America in 2017. Maybe he was exaggerating for political purposes. I’ll just let former President George W. Bush, who was seated on the podium behind Trump, sum things up: “That was some weird s---.”

Also on the podium were former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, along with their first ladies, including Hillary Clinton, whom Trump had just defeated for the presidency. Thus, he had an apt backdrop for the fifth paragraph in his speech: “Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power--”

But what will Trump say at his inaugural? Undoubtedly someone is already writing his speech, but keep an eye on whether he closely hews to the script, as he appears to have done in 2017.

For someone who is not a huge fan of Donald Trump, I watch an inordinate amount of his speechifying at his campaign rallies and news conferences. His Jan. 7 presser was characteristic of Trump’s speaking style. It can be described in a number of ways: rambling, discursive, off-the-cuff, undisciplined, repetitive, digressive.

Devoted MAGA supporters don’t seem to mind — or even notice — Trump’s meandering incoherence, but it’s so real that Trump himself has conjured a name for it: weaving. He’s probably implying that the thread of his ramblings will always return from its wanderings to a coherent narrative.

But does it really? And if Trump, unable to resist the allure of the weave, veers off track on Jan. 20, where will he go?

It seems likely that Trump will somehow revisit the 2020 election, to reassert the patently false claim that he actually beat Biden. He probably won’t point out his unfulfilled promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war before his inauguration, but he may argue that the war never would have happened if he hadn’t been cheated out of his rightful victory in 2020.

Since inaugural speeches are opportunities to talk about an administration’s vision for the future, Trump might use the occasion to clarify his Jan. 7 assertion that he would consider using military force to acquire the Panama Canal or against our NATO ally, Denmark, to acquire Greenland.

I’m guessing that Trump’s speechwriters and other clearheaded Republicans are hoping he’ll stick to the script.