How Donald Trump Got Ready for His Close-Up
The Capitol One Arena is rather dreary. The 27-year-old venue was considered so outdated—and the neighborhood around it so drab—that last year the owner of the Washington Capitals and Wizards threatened to move the teams to Virginia.
But today, the arena will be the unlikely venue where Donald Trump’s political powers and showman’s instincts will be placed on full display.
A tiny desk, affixed with the presidential seal and bathed in red, white, and blue lights, has been placed on a stage built in the center of the arena where—in lieu of a traditional inaugural parade—Trump will hold a rally this afternoon. That is where he is expected to sit and sign a slew of executive orders. His efforts to reshape national policy and presidential power will come not in a quiet Oval Office but in front of a raucous crowd of supporters.
Trump officially completed his stunning comeback by taking the oath of office just after noon today in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. But his second term, in many ways, will truly begin a few hours later in that packed arena about a mile away. An executive producer at heart, Trump has always leaned on the power of imagery in cultivating political force. And in his inaugural address, he was stage-managing his sequel, a presidential spectacle that offered a preview of his plans for his second act.
There were few notes of unity.
“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal,” Trump said, “and all these many betrayals that have taken place, and give people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”
The frigid temperatures gave Trump an excuse to move the inauguration inside, much as Ronald Reagan did in 1985, and they provided him with further control of the pageantry. By not braving the cold—and, to be clear, several inaugurations have been colder—Trump also dispensed with any focus on the size of his crowd, something that upset him deeply eight years ago.
Moreover, he was able to mark his return to power in the very space where a violent mob of his supporters tried to overturn an election to keep him in power. Four years ago, a crowd radicalized by lies of a stolen election stormed the U.S. Capitol and desecrated its Rotunda, committing acts of violence in Trump’s name. Today, official Washington used that same historic hall to welcome him back to power.
If Trump had delivered his speech in its customary outdoor location on the Capitol’s west front, the cheers from the crowd down on the mall below would have been distant. But the indoor setting invoked a State of the Union address, held annually just down the hall in the House of Representatives chamber. And Trump furthered that feeling with a partisan speech, pushing a litany of policy proposals. Reactions split along party lines, with Republicans repeatedly leaping to their feet to applaud and Democrats, including outgoing President Joe Biden, sitting silently.
Trump leaned into the visual messaging of the Capitol ceremony. For most people, seating charts are mundane, tiresome organizational tools. But they are prized in Washington for clues as to who’s up and who’s down, offering a literal map of proximity to power. The signals sent by Trump were clear: GOP donors and friends such as Miriam Adelson and Dana White were seated right behind the row for former presidents. His new tech-billionaire friends—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—got prime seats inside the Rotunda, in front of the incoming Cabinet, while a number of Republican governors, including Ron DeSantis of Florida, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, were shoved to the overflow room.
Inauguration Day was designed to showcase democracy’s strength. Instead, the events of the day showed its inherent fragility. Biden provided Trump what Trump did not give him—a peaceful transfer of power with all the niceties of ceremony—but the outgoing president was so concerned about his successor exacting revenge that he issued extraordinary preemptive pardons to some government officials and members of his own family, which cut sharply against his pledge to restore democratic norms.
As his motorcade wound its way through Washington, Trump was surrounded by his own image. Many of those thronging the nation’s capital—even those shut out of the events by the weather-related scheduling changes—sported shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with Trump’s mugshot taken at Fulton County Jail, in Atlanta, when he was charged in August 2023 with racketeering. At the time, that case in Georgia was just one of four criminal cases that imperiled Trump, though it was the only one that produced a booking photo quickly disseminated around the globe.
Many Democrats hoped it would doom Trump’s chances, undermining a campaign that was about retribution, yes, but also about keeping the candidate out of prison. But three of the cases fell by the wayside, derailed by stalling tactics, prosecutorial blunders, and a helpful Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. And the one case that did move forward—the hush-money trial in New York—ended with a conviction that will be recorded in the history books but meant little else.
Trump has mused that the legal proceedings created images that reinforced his claim to be a victim of a government overreach, the subject of a witch hunt, a martyr taking arrows for his supporters. Throughout the race, he used those visuals to recast political vulnerabilities as visceral symbols of toughness and power. Day after day, the Republicans flocked to the courthouse—sometimes in matching red ties—to demonstrate their fealty. And many in the GOP saw his mugshot not as a sign of wrongdoing or guilt, but as an image of strength and defiance. He used it for countless fundraising appeals and merchandising opportunities.
That wasn’t an accident. In the weeks before Trump’s own arraignment, he saw the case’s other defendants pose for unflattering booking photos that looked washed-out and weak. So Trump practiced various facial expressions, one of his advisers told me on condition of anonymity to discuss private moments. He eventually settled on a scowl, matching his first instinct. And then in the booking room, Trump told confidants later, he saw where the light was coming from and positioned his face, frowning and leaning forward, half in the shadows and half in the full glare.
Trump loved the result. And when it came time to pose for photos for the official inaugural program, he re-created it, his adviser told me. Vice President J. D. Vance’s portrait looks like most official portraits: a pleasant closed-mouth smile, plenty of light illuminating his face. Trump instead asked for an extreme close-up, like his booking photo, with his face somewhat in shadow, glaring at the audience. The photo shaved years off his 78-year-old face and projected a strongman’s toughness.
The other image that defined the 2024 campaign was captured moments after an assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear during a campaign stop in Butler County, Pennsylvania. With blood from his wounded ear streaking across his face, Trump had the showman’s presence of mind to stop the Secret Service agents trying to hustle him to safety. He stood tall, pumped his fist at the roaring crowd, and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight!” It was moment of inspiration—captured in a series of instantly famous photographs—and, for Trump loyalists, perfectly showcased a political survivor.
John F. Kennedy was considered the originator of modern presidential iconography, while Reagan enhanced it. But even more than his glamorous predecessors, Trump knows that the pictures matter far more than the substance. His whole political career has been built around imagery. It was launched on the back of The Apprentice, the highly stylized version of his business career that exaggerated his success and made him America’s CEO.
After he was elected, I saw his skill at stagecraft firsthand while covering his White House. Some images he created were meant for the history books, such as when he left those of us in the press pool behind to step over the border at the DMZ and into North Korea, becoming the first U.S. president to set foot in the hermit-like nation. Others were more mundane: During an Oval Office interview ahead of the 2018 midterms, Trump stopped the questions to make sure the photographer had the most flattering lighting. He held up his hand, and issued instructions.
“Let’s make sure this looks the way it should,” Trump said, unsmiling, while directing the angle and illumination of the photos.
That same attention to the power of political imagery was on display again in Washington today, from the Capitol Rotunda to the Capitol One Arena. Moments after completing his inaugural address, Trump spoke to the overflow room and began by praising the stagecraft of the ceremony.
“It was so beautiful in there today that maybe we should do it every four years,” said Trump, who added that the Rotunda featured “the best acoustics I’ve ever heard in a room.”
He smiled at the camera.
