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Trump Delivers Remarks at Emancipation Hall, Jan. 20, 2025

January 20, 2025 · The White House · 0:36:37

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump delivered remarks to supporters in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center on Jan. 20, 2025, carried on the White House channel (uploaded Jan. 21), speaking to the overflow audience that could not fit in the Rotunda after the inaugural address. Introduced to the room as the decisive winner of the Electoral College and the popular vote, in the introduction as aired, he opened by asking whether that was a hell of a speech, and used the looser setting to range over the day and the address itself.

Among the subjects he took up, as aired, were the outgoing administration’s pardons — criticizing, in his words, pardons covering people he described as murderers holding death sentences — and the reviews coming in on the inaugural speech, which he said he was holding the remarks partly to let settle. The tone was that of a victory rally inside the Capitol hours after the oath.

Why it matters

The Emancipation Hall remarks are the informal companion to the inaugural address: the same day, the same building, the President off the formal text — an early marker of how the term’s two registers, ceremonial and rally, would run side by side.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Delivers Remarks at Emancipation Hall” (YouTube, 2025-01-21; event Jan. 20, 2025, Washington, D.C.) — official description and broadcast transcript as aired.