• Slug: Trump Unscripted. 600 words.
• Photos, captions below.

By Matthew DeWees
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – After a scripted half-hour inaugural address, President Donald Trump went off on a lengthy, unscripted riff to an overflow crowd at the Capitol – venting about a “rigged” 2020 election and blasting former President Joe Biden for 11th-hour pardons of lawmakers who investigated the Jan. 6 attack.

Calling former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who accused him of crimes and impeachable conduct in the riot four years ago “political thugs,” Trump promised to issue his pardons for supporters who stormed the Capitol trying to overturn that election.

“I was going to talk about the J6 hostages,” Trump said, explaining that he’d omitted such references at the urging of advisers and first lady Melania Trump in order to avoid divisiveness.

He assured supporters that despite the omission, mass clemency is coming soon. “It’s action, not words, that count. … You are going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages,” he said.

Space was tight in the Capitol Rotunda, where Trump delivered the first indoor inaugural address since Ronald Reagan’s in 1985 due to a wind chill in the mid-teens. The four living ex-presidents – Democrats Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and Republican George W. Bush – sat grim-faced through most of it.

After escorting Biden and former first lady Jill Biden to a Marine helicopter for a short flight to Joint Base Andrews, Trump returned indoors and spoke with about 600 supporters in Emancipation Hall – without notes and setting aside his own first lady’s advice.

He slammed Biden for preemptively pardoning retired Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs during Trump’s first term. Trump called for his execution after Milley described him as “fascist to the core.”

He alluded to other pardons Biden issued in the final hours of his presidency, among them infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom conservatives have accused of heavyhanded public health measures and of lying to Congress about the origins of COVID-19, which he denies.

The House panel that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, which Trump dubbed the “unselect committee,” drew much of his venom.

He accused the panel – eight Democrats and two Republicans – of destroying key evidence, including details about then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi turning down his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops ahead of Jan. 6.

“Maybe she wanted that to happen,” he said.

Cheney – who Trump called a “disaster” and “a crying lunatic” on Monday – took to X after the speech, calling Trump a liar and recalling that he “sat in his dining room watching on television as his supporters attacked our Capitol and brutally assaulted law enforcement.”

Milley said he was “deeply grateful” for Biden’s pardon, according to Reuters.

Nearly 1,600 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, according to a U.S. Justice Department Report.

About 610 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or other officials. That includes about 175 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.

Trump is likely to pardon non-violent rioters. It’s unclear whether he will also pardon some who physically attacked officers.

Trump’s riff also touched on a number of other old grievances. One such complaint involved the news media’s rejection of his claims eight years ago that 1 million people watched his first inauguration in person.

“We may have (had) a million people that day … but you don’t see those photographs,” he said. “I was going to talk about that. They said, please don’t bring that up right now. You can bring that up tomorrow.”