Jay Weber Show transcript 1-21-25
It’s been a tiring line since the Reagan era: but it really does feel like morning in America, again.
Donald trump officially took office yesterday and vowed right in his inaugural speech to fix and reverse every terrible failure and new disaster created by the Biden regime.
His speech was really something. It came right after his swearing in, of course, and so, with joe Biden and kamala Harris sitting right there- just off to his side and slightly behind him-
Trump ripped ‘em for the last four years and labeled their tenure as a betrayal of the country. Oof:
From this moment- American decline is over.
He says that with joe and Kammy sitting right behind him.
Fantastic.
It was clear to me that Donald Trump hadn’t really had the chance to pre-read this speech. This was clearly a text that he had ‘spent no time with’ and was practically reading cold.
I know that because his inflection was off. His ‘tone’ was low key and often didn’t match the script. Because he was reading it carefully, not wanting to stumble on some of the soaring rhetoric, and so, in a significant way, the impact of the moment was not ‘what it could have been’.
Great speech. But it was haltingly delivered.
I loved the patriotic message.
At one point-Trump said quote.... above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization.’
Trump: "The United States Will Once Again Consider Itself A Growing Nation"
That’s good stuff.
It also included a few ‘bonus lines’ about how trump was certain god spared his life so that he could restore America to greatness...etc.
I call them ‘bonus lines’, because you know that hearing them drove every single democrat in the room crazy...including Joe and Kammy.
But-as Hugh Hewitt noted afterward: everything Trump said was justified and warranted.
The left can claim that he was unnecessarily harsh or could have been more gracious to President Biden-
But why? The voters know Biden destroyed the country-and that includes all the people who voted for him.
And i mean this: Joe and Mika, and van jones and David Axelrod, and Charlie Sykes and the never- Trumpers who promoted and voted for Joe Biden-
They’re not idiots. They know Biden and his regime were a uniquely bad. Historically bad. Group of decision makers and administrators. They know trump isn’t wrong when he labels the last four years, basically, a betrayal of the country and what it stands for.
I’d love to see this become an era of genuine renewal of the American spirit and American patriotism. It has basically been since the Reagan era that most Americans felt a patriotic pride that we-should not- apologize for.
Then Clinton came into office-and the activist left started to ‘apologize for’ America’s greatness...and worse: in the Obama era, Americans- especially Americans of color- were told that they shouldn’t have a pride in this country or in their birthplace. That soured a generation of Americans and squelched patriotism. Intentionally.
This was a very intentional movement by Barrack Obama and eric holder- as left-wing activists who finally got the bullhorn and decided to ‘set America straight’ about not being a great country...etc.
Patriotism was discouraged in the Obama era-and has been again in the Biden era.
Trump and his supporters certainly waved the flag and showed the patriotism in ‘term one’, but he starts off as a far more popular president in term two- with a much wider coalition of voters.
A coalition that includes all sorts of those very same people who Obama, holder, and today’s left have insisted should feel antagonism toward their own country.
Trump’s second term kicks off after he and the GOP formed a coalition of new GOP voters-including all sorts of new blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Muslims, Libertarians, etc.
His campaign-and his victory- was a breath of fresh air after four long years of dark, dreary winter.
Look at all of the ‘new vibe’ energy he’s brought to DC with his message and his cabinet selections.
The Biden years really were a never-ending string of failures and embarrassments and incompetence- and threw out it all- all Biden and today’s top democrats did was lie to us.
Every day. On every issue. In every moment. It seemed like all they were doing was lying to us. The term ‘gaslight’ has never been so popular.
American’s love a comeback story-and trump’s is unlike any we’ve seen before: the man was even shot in the head, for heaven’s sake, and bounced up like he wanted to finish the rally.
The most iconic image of the campaign was trump standing with blood on his face...fist in the air...American flag waving in the background.
It was such a powerful image that the NY Times and wash post-intentionally- cropped out the American flag behind him when they ran it-because their editors knew what a powerful, pro-America image it was.
There is no doubt that trump is working to usher in a patriotic renewal. It’s one reason (we are told) that he’s talking about Greenland and the Panama Canal. He wants to renew the sense that Americans are explorers...and conquerors of challenges...and creators of our own destiny.
Because we are.
Or, at least, we always have been-until today’s America-hating democrats started to win elections during the Obama and first Trump eras.
As one piece put it yesterday: you can feel the positive reaction to decades of anti-American indoctrination in public education, academia, Hollywood, and the news media. People have been taught to hate their country.
And the rest of us have grown weary of it. And are now on ‘full alert’ for it.
Last June- Gallup measured the lowest level of patriotism they’ve ever measured. Since they started the poll question.
In June....only 41 percent of the public said they were extremely proud to be Americans. That’s it.
In 1998- 70 percent of Americans responded that way.
I’ll steal this line from a column i read yesterday: trump is perfectly positioned to lead a patriotic renewal.
Yes. He is. For all the faults people want to lay on the guy- Donald Trump is a true patriot...and he wants what’s best for this country...and he has proven it –
Relentlessly proven it- over the last 9 years or so. He fought against a tsunami of relentless smear campaigns and lawfare and lies launched to ruin him. He’s survived two attempts on his life. He resurrected a political career-and a party-following a crushing defeat in 2020.Defeated all challengers. Rose again with more power and influence than ever.
The liberals and trump haters in the audience can roll their eyes at that if they’d like. But if you’ve listened any length of time, you know that i am not one to mindlessly heap effusive praise onto Donald Trump.
But even his harshest critics should be willing to grudgingly give some praise today.
He has brought a new American coalition and a whole new energy to the country after two decades of nothing but division and stalemates and bitterness.
He’s brought the country a president and a party who are finally. Finally. Listening to the wishes and desires of the American people again, instead of ignoring us in favor of doing the bidding of their special interests.
This really is-morning in America, again- and some of us have been waiting about 30 years to see it. The Clinton and Bush eras weren’t as dark and negative and bleak as the Obama and Biden years were-
But- aside from a spike of patriotism around 9-11- this country is long overdue for a surge of national pride. And hopefully, we can sustain it this time.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > A new sense of patriotism and optimism