An exultant Donald Trump has promised to act with “historic speed and strength” when he returns to the White House on Monday, teeing up a barrage of executive orders targeting illegal immigration, transgender rights and other rightwing priorities.
“We won, we won,” Trump declared on Sunday during a triumphant return to Washington, where he held a raucous “victory rally” with thousands of supporters in a downtown sports arena. “What a good feeling. We like winning, don’t we, eh? We’re going to make our country greater than ever before.”
The soon-to-be 47th president delivered a characteristically rollicking speech, a mix of boasts, false claims and sweeping promises, that set the stage for his inauguration at noon on Monday and the populist blitz that will follow.
“Starting tomorrow, I will act with historic speed of strength and fix every single crisis facing our country,” he said.
“Every radical, foolish executive order of the Biden administration will be repealed within hours of when I take the oath of office. You’re gonna have a lot of fun watching television. Somebody said yesterday, don’t sign so many in one day, let’s do it over a period of weeks. I said, like hell … no, we’re doing them tomorrow.”
Just as on the campaign trail, Trump put illegal immigration front and centre, painting a lurid picture of the US as land of open borders under siege by violent thugs released from foreign jails as far away as Congo. He played a video showing crimes allegedly committed by undocumented people.
“By the time the sun sets tomorrow, the invasion of our country will have come to a halt,” he said. “The border security measures I will outline in my inaugural address tomorrow will be the most aggressive, sweeping effort to restore our borders that the world has ever seen.”
Trump repeated his campaign pledge to launch the biggest deportation effort in US history, which would remove millions of immigrants – an operation of that scale would probably take years and be hugely costly.
The event marked his first major address in Washington since his speech on 6 January 2021 that preceded the storming of the US Capitol by an angry mob of his supporters. Trump has said he will pardon many of the more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the attack, calling them “hostages”.
He said: “Tomorrow everybody in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision on the J6 hostages. Very happy. I think you will be very, very happy.”
The pre-inauguration rally was unlike anything that an incoming president has staged before. Thousands of people lined up outside the Capital One Arena on a cold, grey and snowy day. Sweater slogans included “Make America great again,” “Pro God, Pro Gun” and “Proud J6er” – a reference to January 6.
Trump walked down a stairway as Lee Greenwood sang the signature campaign song God Bless the USA and the crowd roared in adulation, chanting “USA! USA!” He stood on red carpet under basketball and ice hockey pennants, but the top tier was mostly empty, and promised to “take back our country”.
The president-elect said: “Tomorrow at noon the curtain closes on four long years of American decline and we begin a brand new day of American strength and prosperity, dignity and pride.”
He went on to claim credit for Sunday’s release of hostages from Gaza and the return of TikTok for US consumers. “As of today, TikTok is back,” he said, before falsely claiming he had “won the youth vote” thanks to his support on the app. Trump increased his share of the youth vote in 2024, but still lost that demographic to Kamala Harris.
‘We need to save TikTok’ says Trump who called for the app to be banned in 2020 – video
Trump said he would instruct the military to construct an “iron dome” missile defence system. He also pledged to “get radical woke ideologies the hell out of our military” and played a video intercutting scenes of a bullying drill sergeant in the film Full Metal Jacket with clips of transgender individuals supposedly associated with the Biden-Harris administration.
Roared on by the crowd, Trump said: “We will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of schools … This will be done tomorrow. We will keep men out of women’s sports.”
He shared plans to travel to Los Angeles on Friday to survey the damage of wildfires that killed at least 27 people and scorched the largest urban area of California in at least 40 years.
Trump further promised to reverse the “over-classification” of government documents, a seeming reference to his federal indictment for retaining classified papers after leaving office. He pledged to release classified documents relating to the assassinations of John F Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The rally featured an appearance by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent $200m to help Trump win election and is heading a task force to cut government spending.
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Elon Musk on stage with his son and Donald Trump during a rally at Capital One Arena in Washington DC, on Sunday. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA
Cheered by the crowd, Musk said: “We’re looking forward to making a lot of changes. This victory is the start, really. What matters going forward is to actually make significant changes … and set the foundation for America to be strong for centuries, forever. And make America great again.”
Trump appeared to reference “racehorse theory”, the idea that certain bloodlines produce superior offspring, while complimenting Musk and his young son who joined him on stage. “If you believe in the racehorse theory, he’s got a nice, smart son,” Trump said of Musk.
The term, which Trump has previously explained as meaning that “fast horses produce fast horses”, is a reference to racehorse breeding. It has at times been used by white supremacists, Nazis and eugenicists to promote racial purity.
The rally also featured a performance by musician Kid Rock and speeches by Hollywood actor Jon Voight as well as Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr and granddaughter Kai.
Trump wrapped up his hourlong speech with a performance by the Village People, who sang YMCA, the anthem that closed out nearly all of Trump’s campaign rallies. Trump swayed on stage, bopped his head and sang along as they performed.
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The Maga faithful welcomed Trump’s plans for January 6 rioters. Felecia Hicks, 30, from McAlester, Oklahoma, said: “He needs to pardon them. My mom was there that day and could very well have been one of those people falsely accused.
“I believe that it was the Capitol police that incited a lot of that and there were a lot of infiltrators that looked like Trump supporters that added to the chaos. There’s a lot of people that’s been falsely accused and they haven’t been given the right justice.”
Hicks, a special education teaching assistant who has supported Trump since 2016, said of his other plans: “He needs to go through with checking our vaccines and getting the red dyes and different things out of our food. I believe that there’s a lot of different things he needs to do and I would not want to be the one prioritising what goes first.”
Reina Decapua, 52, from Carmel, Indiana, was attending her first Trump rally “because he’s going to be such an awesome president. I like his policies. I like that he tells you what he thinks. He’s got a set of balls.”
Trump’s priorities, she added, should be removing illegal immigrants, completing his wall on the southern border and keeping his 2017 tax cuts in place.
Irving King, 49, from Washington DC, said he had come to see wrestler Hulk Hogan, whom he had been a fan of since he was a boy. “It makes sense he’s a Trump supporter because he’s a conservative,” he said. “Trump is on the right track because we need change. I hope he will make it a little easier for us to pay for our groceries and our bills.”
