After another dark but scripted inaugural address — this time, in the Capitol rotunda — President Donald Trump went downstairs to the Capitol Visitor Center and delivered a very different speech: off-the-cuff, lighthearted and largely nonsensical.
Trump dubbed it “a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” adding that he gave the room full of supporters the “A-plus” treatment.
In the speech — which Trump delivered without a teleprompter for about 33 minutes and which was longer than his official inauguration address — the president divulged anecdotes that his advisers and Vice President JD Vance urged him to drop from his official remarks.