Trump’s inaugural address centers on pledge to lift a country in ‘decline’

If his first Inaugural Address was a relentlessly dark vision of “American carnage,” President Trump made his second one a paean to the power of one person’s ability to rescue a nation — specifically his.

The 47th president’s 29-minute address on Monday, just after noon, painted an even bleaker portrait of a country in disarray, one seized by “years of a radical and corrupt establishment,” with the pillars of society “broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.” America, he said, “cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad.”

It was a misleading and incomplete assessment of a country that has a growing economy, with falling inflation, slowing illegal immigration, a record-breaking stock market, the lowest levels of violent crime in years and a military that has limited engagement in conflicts around the world.

In that way, it was a speech that went to the core of Mr. Trump’s political appeal: convincing his supporters that he — and he alone — can fix what ails (or does not ail) the country. And it represented a reprisal of how he framed his first presidency — as a constant fight against enemies, foreign and domestic.