Donald Trump has taken the oath of office to become the 47th president of the United States, returning to the White House four years after he left it in defeat.

In his inaugural speech on Monday, Trump, 78, took an aggressive posture, using his podium in the US Capitol Rotunda to blast his predecessor, outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden.

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He also framed himself as a victim of government “weaponisation”, taking jabs at what he called a “radical and corrupt establishment”.

“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal,” Trump said. “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”

This was Trump’s second presidency, after he served in the White House from 2017 to 2021.

But the Trump who returned to the presidency on Monday was a Trump who appeared more confident than in his first term, as he announced his intention to sign a stream of executive actions from his first moments in office.

“ With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It’s all about common sense,” he said, citing a new pro-business energy policy and a crackdown on irregular migration as two of his first actions.

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He also pledged to “expand” US borders, warning Panama that he would “take back” the canal the US built there.

Still, while Trump once again painted a portrait of the US as a country on the precipice, he tried to strike a more upbeat posture than in his 2017 inaugural address, which became known as the “American carnage” speech.

“I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success,” Trump said. “A tide of change is sweeping the country. Sunlight is pouring over the entire world. And America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.”

Biden delivers last-minute, preemptive pardons

But mere hours before Trump’s inauguration, Biden attempted to scuttle some of Trump’s campaign-trail threats.

Trump had repeatedly pledged retribution against those who criticised him, prompting Biden to take an extraordinary action: He issued preemptive pardons for those who might be prosecuted under Trump’s presidency.

Biden’s pardon offered protection to three frequent targets of Trump’s ire, as well as members of his own family.

One was Dr Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who clashed with Trump over the country’s COVID-19 emergency response. Another was General Mark Milley, a Trump appointee-turned-critic who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a panel of top military leaders, from 2019 to 2023.

The final group shielded under the pardon was the members of the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack, which investigated the events of January 6, 2021.

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On that day, a group of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an apparent effort to stop the certification of Trump’s defeat in 2020.

In its final report, the committee referred Trump for criminal prosecution, accusing him assisting an insurrection against the government.

Trump has repeatedly threatened members of that committee with imprisonment, particularly Liz Cheney, its most prominent Republican.

“For what they did, yeah, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump told the TV programme Meet the Press in December.

Biden noted these threats in his statement on Monday, warning of potential prosecutions.

“Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day. They are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Biden wrote. “Yet alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties.”

However, he emphasised that these pardons should not be “should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing”.

Trump calls for an end to ‘weaponisation’ of justice

At noon Eastern time (17:00 GMT), Biden and three other former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama — piled into the Capitol rotunda with other dignitaries to witness Trump take his second oath of office.

In opening remarks, Senator Amy Klobuchar reminded the audience that the theme of Monday’s inauguration was “our enduring democracy”.

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But when Trump took the podium to deliver his inaugural address, he quickly cast a portrait of the outgoing administration as “corrupt”, without naming Biden outright.

“Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponisation of the Justice Department and our government will end,” Trump said in the opening minutes of his speech.

While out of the White House from 2021 to 2025, Trump became the first US president to be charged and convicted of felony crimes.

His conviction came in May, after a jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business documents, related to efforts to conceal hush-money payment to a porn star during the 2016 election.

But Trump faced three other criminal indictments in addition. They included a state case in Georgia, where prosecutors accused him of participating in a criminal conspiracy to undermine the state’s 2020 election results.

And until recently, Trump faced two federal indictments — one for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election, and the other for withholding classified documents while out of office. Both cases were dropped in November, in accordance with Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.

Trump has long denied wrongdoing in all the cases against him, and he has accused Democrats of using the Justice Department for personal “witch hunts”.

In Monday’s speech, he tied the criminal probes to an assassination attempt he faced in July, while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania.

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“Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history,” Trump said.

“The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one — that, I can tell you. Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and, indeed, to take my life.”

State of emergency at the southern border

Trump’s inaugural speech also sought to make good on promises the Republican delivered on the campaign trail.

His first priority, he said, was to declare an emergency on the southern border with Mexico.

“All illegal entry will immediately be halted. And we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said.

As part of that push, Trump explained he would send troops to the border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country”.

He also pledged to re-implement his 2019 “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to stay on the other side of the border while waiting for their immigration appointments and court dates.

Critics, however, had challenged the policy as a violation of domestic and international asylum law, pointing out that asylum seekers have the right to cross international borders to flee imminent persecution. They also argued that parts of the Mexican border were unsafe for migrants and asylum seekers to remain in, due to the presence of criminal activity.

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Biden attempted to end the policy in February 2021, shortly after taking office, and it has since been wrapped up in litigation.

Also in Monday’s speech, Trump repeated his false assertion that foreign countries were emptying their prisons and mental health institutions across the US border, and he pledged to designate drug-trafficking cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations”.

Then, he added, he would invoke the  Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the president to detain and deport foreign nationals during times of war, to go after “all foreign gangs and criminal networks”.

“As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and  invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” Trump said.

An estimated 11 million people live in the US without legal authorisation, and human rights advocates fear Trump’s proposed crackdown may extend beyond criminal networks, ultimately fissuring families and communities.

A return to ‘manifest destiny’

Trump painted a rosy picture of life under his incoming presidency: one in which the US is prosperous and growing.

But in doing so, he used loaded language like “manifest destiny”, a term associated with the westward expansion of colonialism across North America, forcibly displacing Indigenous peoples.

“ The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” he said.

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“And we will pursue our manifest destiny into this stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”

In the lead-up to his inauguration, Trump has made repeated references to expanding US territory abroad.

In Central America, he has urged Panama to “return” the Panama Canal, claiming unfair trade practices across the US-built waterway. To the north, he has encouraged Canada to become the US’s “51st state”. And in the case of Greenland, he has refused to rule out “military or economic coercion” in his push to assimilate the autonomous Danish territory.

Trump reprised several of those issues in his inauguration speech, accusing Panama as treating the US “very badly”.

“We gave it to Panama,” Trump said of the canal. “And we’re taking it back.”

Trump also called for the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the “Gulf of America”, and he said he would revert the name of an Alaskan mountain, currently known by its Indigenous name Denali, to “Mount McKinley”.

In his speech, Trump depicted the US’s colonial era as a time of triumph, arguing that present-day Americans need to return to the spirit of that age.

“The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls,” Trump said.

“Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on earth. No one comes close.”

‘Colour-blind and merit-based’ society

As part of his depiction of an America in crisis, Trump sketched a vision of the US hampered by censorship, a recurring theme in the conservative sphere in recent years.

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“After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” Trump said.

But he pivoted from there to attacking efforts to educate about racism and enduring racial divides, through diversity initiatives in schools and businesses. Many conservatives have deemed such programmes “woke” and have called for them to be dismantled.

He also made allusions to his campaign promises to dismantle protections for transgender and nonbinary Americans.

“ I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit-based,” he said.

“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”

Despite the divisive rhetoric, Trump repeatedly described himself as a “unifier” in his speech, ushering in a new age of prosperity.

“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier,” he said. That spirit will extend beyond the US’s borders, he added.

“ We will be a nation like no other full of compassion, courage and exceptionalism. Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable.”

Speaking from Capitol Hill, Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher called the speech a “very dark” one.

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“This was Donald Trump effectively settling scores,” Fisher said, comparing it to a campaign speech.

Fisher described Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s rival in the 2024 race, as sitting “stony-faced” in the audience, only rising to their feet when the release of Israeli captives in Gaza was mentioned.