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.