Presidential elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th United States president on Jan. 20 in the U.S. Capitol building. The inauguration is organized by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC) and will include the swearing- in ceremony, the inaugural address and the pass-in review. Trump’s second and final term will begin at noon on Jan. 20, as instructed by the 20th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
Trump’s inauguration for his second term brings with it mixed feelings from students at this school on both sides of the aisle. For her part, Harper Barrett, member of CHS Democrats Club and sophomore, said Trump’s 2016-2020 presidency made her wary of his upcoming one. Barrett said Trump’s impact on the insurrection influenced negative interactions with the Republican party for her personally.
“(Trump’s) actions thus far have shown to a lot of the people on the left that he does not value democracy, ‘it is not important to him,’” she said. “He was intentionally lying and deceiving his supporters and deceiving the public. And I think that’s especially important to consider, when thinking about the upcoming presidency, his upcoming presidency, that he does not value democracy, he does not value the rules that have been put in place. . . I’ve had several interactions with Republicans in the Democrats Club, and been in discussions with people on the right where there was just a lot of ignorance on their part, where they just didn’t really know what they were talking about. It’s because they believe, or choose to support, (Trump’s) lies.” Barrett said.
Some of the “lies” Barrett refers to are in regard to Trump’s claims after the 2020 election. According to ABC News, early into counting the votes for the 2020 election Trump gave a speech at the White House and said, “This is a fraud on the American public.This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” He then added, “We want all voting to stop.” Later on Nov. 7, 2020, Trump tweeted “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” and “This election is far from over,” promising to file charges. On March 2, 2020 Trump said to North Carolina, “Eighty-two percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election,” where polls report that only 30% of Americans thought Trump’s election was “stolen.”
Voter outreach volunteer Frederick James said, “Trump had been explaining to all who would listen that the only way he could lose was if there was cheating, which was a baseless claim. He just kept repeating that lie, and he would give anecdotal stories, which, by the way, were not true. His constant lies, about the insurrection and his overall capabilities are changing the Republican party…Like with my Republican in-laws, they seem almost brainwashed by Trump’s lies and think the insurrection was a necessary expression of free will, instead of a threat to democracy. It’s almost like he’s forcing the party to stay ignorant.”

However, Gopi Chellapilla, vice president of CHS Young Republicans and senior, said that Trump did not directly influence the insurrection and remained relatively truthful throughout his previous presidency.
“I feel like Trump did lose the election, but the Democrats just wanted to show that Trump was fighting a lot, and saying that he won the election when he didn’t, in fact,” he said. “So I feel like he had no role in the protests that happened on January 20th. . . I feel like it is his mistake to say storm the Capitol because by saying that he isn’t upholding the values of democracy that this country was founded upon. But to an extent, I feel like there’s a mistake on both sides, and I do agree that he lost the election. But many republicans I speak with were constantly against Biden no matter what he did because they believed he wasn’t the rightful president.”
Chellapilla reiterated people should not worry about any similar instance repeating in Trump’s 2025-2029 presidency, and Trump had no impact on wavering democracy.
However FiveThirtyEight Politics reported that Trump’s media presence has drastically fueled right-wing extremism. Prior to the insurrection in 2021, Trump has a history of expressing his content with extremism. In Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, far-right protesters including neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members fought with anti-protestors to keep a statue of general who had fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the US Civil War. Trump commented on the violence, however didn’t explicitly condemn those on the far-right and claimed “there were very fine people on both sides.”
Chellapilla said, “Him saying, ‘I think there would be at least a few good people on both sides’ did not tell the vast majority of people that he supported their extremism. His comment I don’t think would have a huge impact on extremism. . . I think he does a lot of stuff to be on the news and to get good publicity,”
James said Trump’s right-wing extremism and disregard for legitimate governance had transformed the Republican party. He, a democratic voter, said Trump had distorted the Republican party so extremely that right-wing voting should not have been considered even by republicans.
“In many places, if you want to run as a Republican, you have to bend the knee to Donald Trump and say that you feel the election was rigged, and buy into and spread all of his lies. The Republican party has become beholden to one man, throughout his last presidency and the 2024 election. It used to be a party that had its own ideas, they were the law and order party. They still want to believe themselves to be the law and order party, but they have given that up, in my opinion…I’ve tried to explain to people that they want him to deport criminal immigrants, but they put a criminal in office,” James said.
Barrett said she also thinks Trump has extremist views, “I think that also it impacted the insurrection and this previous election, the 2024 election, and will impact Trump’s (upcoming) presidency because (protesters in the insurrection and Charlottesville) got away with it. A lot of them kind of got off easy for what they did. In acts of terrorism, they’re not necessarily treated as such. It just proved that this form of extremism is acceptable. The message that was given is that, you know, if something like this were to happen again, it would be tolerated.”
She said Trump showed people in his last presidency that he was an extremist and in his upcoming one people will see it, and the Republican party will be permanently altered.
Still, Chellapilla said his experiences with the Democratic party showed it had become more extreme than Republicans, and could possibly be the more uneducated party.
He said, “The majority of liberals who go to, for example (political activist) Charlie Kirk events- and you know how he interviews them like at colleges- I feel like a majority of them (the liberals), when they talk, they can’t answer his questions. But few liberals that I know are really, really knowledgeable on what’s going on, and I get to have active conversations with them.”
While James and Barrett said Trump’s upcoming presidency, which will end Jan. 20, 2029, will increase Republican extremism, Chellapilla said he was excited for the upcoming term.
“The next four years are going to be really good for America and American power projection,” he said. “I think the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is gonna end, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is going to end. Before he becomes the president, I think the war in the Middle East is going to be over. Yeah, (Trump has) made some threats, but I feel like he’s really gonna make America great again.”