After taking office, Trump pardons Jan 6 rioters, signs sweeping orders on immigration and energy

In the State Department, more than a dozen nonpartisan senior diplomats were asked to resign as part of a broader plan to replace nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists.

He also said he would issue orders to scrap federal diversity programs and require the government to recognise only genders assigned at birth.

While Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier during his half-hour speech, his tone was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into America and voiced familiar grievances over his criminal prosecutions.

With Biden seated nearby, Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor’s policies from immigration to foreign affairs.

“We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders, or more importantly, its own people,” Trump said.

Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration – including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump’s family.

Trump said he would send astronauts to Mars, prompting Musk – who has long talked about colonising the planet – to raise his fists.

Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among US allies.