President Donald Trump began his promised flurry of executive action after his inauguration on Monday, including branding dangerous Mexican drug cartels as “terrorists”
Donald Trump is pictured in the President’s Room following the inauguration ceremony (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump on Monday found a letter written to him by Joe Biden.
During an impromptu press conference amid his inauguration, the President, 78, was reminded by a journalist to look for a message Biden had left him. Trump checked the Resolute desk drawers and discovered the note.
Photographs show the world leader hold up the letter, but he said he intended to read it himself before making the content public. The letter’s envelope had “47” underlined, handwritten in what looked like pencil.
Trump signed an initial flurry of executive orders at Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, where thousands of his supporters gathered to celebrate an inaugural parade that was moved indoors due to the cold. These ideas concerned trade, immigration and foreign policy – and Trump pledged to send humans to Mars.
He favoured legal immigration as he signed orders declaring a national emergency on the US-Mexico border, suspending refugee resettlement and ending automatic citizenship for anyone born in the US.
People wait inside Capitol One Arena ahead of the inaugural parade ( Image:
AFP via Getty Images) But the dad of five also stressed he will sign pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office, he said at the rally in Washington DC. The US President is expected to pardon hundreds of people prosecuted for their involvement in the violent insurrection at the US Capitol Building four years ago.
It’s unclear whether he’ll pardon all 1,600 people prosecuted or imprisoned over the attempted coup, or just the 900 or so that were charged with non-violent misdemeanour offences like trespass. He said he’d be signing pardons for “a lot of people” and he would be freeing “the J6 Hostages today.”
From the start, Trump’s speech tracked his campaign rally approach: big promises of national success due to his leadership, with plenty of sweeping indictments of the status quo.
He said: “The golden age of America begins right now… Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced,” he continued. “Our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous and free. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad.”