Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star, and original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael reflected on President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech on Monday in real time on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
After airing Trump’s 30-minute speech live on air, Leahy and Carmichael highlighted memorable lines of the president’s speech, including Trump’s line, “I believe my life was saved for a reason – I was saved by God to Make America Great Again.”
Other lines Leahy and Carmichael highlighted and commended from Trump’s speech included when the president said, “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars,” “Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation,” and “Sunlight is about to pour over the entire world.”
“It was one of the best inaugural addresses in a long time,” Leahy declared.
“This was a wonderful speech,” Carmichael agreed.
Noting the significance of the transfer of power happening in real-time, Carmichael explained how Trump’s return comes as he is a “wiser person” than he was in 2017 when he first entered office due to his personal experience of being a target of an “oppressive government” the last four years.
“The peaceful transfer of power comes about as the voters choose to change the trajectory of the country, and Trump understands that a lot better today, I think, than he did. He’s a much wiser person,” Carmichael explained.
“He sees what an oppressive government can be. There are three ways that people learn. They learn from their personal experiences, they learn from observing other things going on at the same time as they’re alive, and then they learn from history. When you learn from personal experiences, you learn the most. So what has happened to him in the last eight years, and especially the last two years, he says, this is wrong. This is not the way a government of free people should be and so he’s going to change that. Unless people start being criminal in their actions, I don’t believe he’s going to for example indict Jack Smith. I don’t think that his Justice Department will even investigate Jack Smith,” Carmichael added.
In the moments after Trump and Vice President JD Vance were officially sworn into office and spoke in the new roles for the first time, Leahy and Carmichael said they were optimistic about the nation’s future.
“I think Trump’s vision and his desire to accomplish his vision are absolutely in parallel with each other. So in other words, he’s not saying one thing and he’s going to do another. I believe he will attempt to do every single thing, and I think he will accomplish an amazing amount more than we think,” Carmichael said.
Watch the full segment:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
