Ask anyone who watched Donald Trump’s first inaugural address in 2017, and they remember one phrase: “American carnage.”
Trump — then still a bit of a question mark among congressional Republicans — subverted the conventional wisdom that his inaugural speech should uplift and unify and, instead, used his address to paint a much darker picture of America.
Mothers and children “trapped in poverty.” Rusted-out factories “scattered like tombstones.” A bloated education system that leaves students “deprived of knowledge.” Crime, gangs and drugs that “robbed the country” of potential. That was the nation Trump asked Americans to imagine in 2017.
But in 2025, Republicans are looking for Trump — now a two-time victor returning to Washington as the clear standard-bearer of the GOP — to strike a vastly different tone.
In fact, they hope he’s lighthearted.
“No matter what he says,” Rep. Eric Burlison told NOTUS, “I’m sure it will be funny.”
Trump has survived two assassination attempts, four criminal indictments, nine primary challengers and 34 felony convictions. He grew upon his 2016 margins by 14.3 million votes and eight electoral college points. He ushered a Republican trifecta into Washington, and fighting political headwinds, he installed his preferred speaker. Whereas dozens of Republicans in Congress doubted Trump on his first day in office — at least, privately — his Republican naysayers in Congress can now be counted on one hand.
“Seems a lot different to me than it did in 2017, right? The temperature is lower. Maybe the country is just tired and exhausted after the campaign,” Rep. Tom Cole, a convert to hardcore Trumpism, told NOTUS.
“It doesn’t mean the lions are laying down with the lambs here, but it does mean, maybe we’ll have a more normal presidency than we had last time,” he added.
For Republicans eagerly awaiting their conquering hero’s return, the first address of his second administration should feel like an authentically Trumpian celebration — ad libs and rants and all.
“He’s coming in on such a wave of good feeling and excitement,” Rep. Mike Kelly said. “I think he’ll just light it up. Although the day is going to be so cold, he’ll warm up the crowd with his speech.”
(At the time of the interview with Kelly, Trump hadn’t announced that he was moving his inauguration ceremonies inside.)
The American Carnage speech, as it’s known, was widely received as a dark start to Trump’s administration. For his critics, it was a harbinger of the four years to come — the family separation, the travel ban, the undoing of abortion rights. For his supporters, it was a frank assessment of how low the country had sunk under President Barack Obama’s watch and all the work Trump had to do to restore the nation to Make America Great Again.
But outside of the tone, what’s notable about the speech is that Trump delivered those initial remarks with careful precision, seemingly not missing a word from the teleprompter in front of him.
In the eight years since then, Trump has leaned into a rhetorical style he describes as the “weave” — a mix of off-the-cuff and prepared comments that include seemingly disparate tangents that he insists, somehow, relate.
It’s been years, it seems, since Trump stuck to a script like he did at his 2017 inauguration. It’s hard to imagine, at least, that frequent Trump bits about inviting Hannibal Lecter to dinner or Robert E. Lee never fighting uphill were ever read from a teleprompter.
Just as lawmakers are looking for Trump to strike a different tone from American Carnage, they aren’t looking for Trump to return to a script.
Several GOP lawmakers told NOTUS they would be disappointed without Trump’s signature freewheeling oratory. It might not be presidential, or academic, but that’s not the Trump that the Republican Party has grown to embrace.
“I’ll give you an example,” Rep. Tom Tiffany told NOTUS, when explaining the style he hopes to hear from Trump on Monday.
“He’s talking about the wind turbines that are going up on the East Coast,” Tiffany said. “He says they’re, ‘Driving the whales crazy.’”
“Other people, including scientists, are going to say it in a different manner,” he said. “But what he’s saying is accurate, and so he has his own way of communicating with the American people that they understand.”
Trump made his career railing against political correctness, and if there is a politically correct way to deliver a speech, Trump has spent eight years dismantling it. The days of Obama’s lofty oratory are long gone. Even Joe Biden’s folksy but hopeful tone is over.
Back is Trump’s ranting, maundering, unelevated style. And it’s that freewheeling approach that got Trump elected in November, his Republican backers told NOTUS.
“For so much time, people thought, wouldn’t it be great if a president didn’t read from a teleprompter, and they just said what they thought, right? The politician actually just said what they were really thinking,” Burlison said. “We have that.”
“It took the American culture a little bit of time to, when he says certain things, understand what he really means by that,” he said.
It’s taken even Trump’s political advisers time to adjust to Trump’s rhetorical style. Trump was scheduled to deliver his first public comments at the Republican National Convention after a gunman nearly killed him at a Pennsylvania rally days before. His campaign promised a polished, “unifying” speech aimed at seizing on a rare moment of bipartisan goodwill that the former president was enjoying when he accepted his party’s nomination for the third time.
Instead, Trump improvised for over 90 minutes, blaming the Democrats for “destroying our country,” disparaging “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and accusing Biden of using “COVID to cheat” in the 2020 election.
The RNC address may have provoked some heartburn for GOP politicos and pundits at the moment. But Trump won anyway. Republicans say they might as well let Trump be Trump.
“I’m just thrilled to hear it,” Cole said of the upcoming speech. “He doesn’t have to check any boxes for me.”
Rep. Jim Jordan told NOTUS that Trump has a great track record of speeches from the campaign that he can draw upon on Monday.
“Even when he’s not on script, I think he’s great,” Jordan said. “And I think it’s some of the funniest things the rallies are when he’s not on script. He’s just hilarious.”
There’s perhaps only one way Republicans are looking for Trump to emulate his first inaugural address: brevity. Trump delivered the American Carnage speech in under 20 minutes. Even if they’re inside, they don’t need a verbose address.
“I don’t need to hear a lot,” Rep. Andy Ogles said.
While lawmakers want Trump to move through his speech quickly, there are some policies they hope he hits. Ogles mentioned Trump’s aspiration to acquire Greenland. Kelly named Trump’s mission to control the Panama Canal. Rep. Eli Crane wants a mention of spending cuts. And Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said border security.
Those are all topics that Trump has made mainstays of his transition messaging, and they may appear in Trump’s inaugural address. But Republicans were even more aligned on their desired themes. Not one of the more than 20 lawmakers who spoke to NOTUS described anything like “American carnage.”
“A tribute to American greatness,” Rep. Darrell Issa said.
“Promises made, promises kept,” Rep. Joe Wilson said.
A “rekindled American dream,” said Rep. Ryan Zinke, who previously served as Trump’s interior secretary.
But perhaps Rep. Derrick Van Orden summed up Republicans’ prevailing sentiments best.
“It should be a unifying message of patriotism,” he told NOTUS. “And awesomeness.”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.