tuesday marks donald trump's last full
day as president of the united states
trump will leave the white house with
what some opinion polls say are the
lowest approval ratings of his four-year
presidency
he will also leave washington d.c in a
state of high alert
the fbi is vetting all 25 000 service
personnel involved in president-elect
joe biden's inauguration on wednesday
officials have expressed concern about a
possible insider attack or other
potential threat
now security concerns have gripped the
city since a violent mob
stormed the capitol on january 6th
downtown washington usually buzzing with
people and traffic
now a ghost town
on the other side traffic jams and
checkpoints
a city split in two the center has
become a militarized zone
and the u.s capital remains under a
strict lockdown
just days before the presidential
inauguration
we are just outside the closed perimeter
and this is as close as the general
public can get to the u.s
capitol which is currently cordoned off
by a three meter high fence and
razor wire which is currently installed
on top of the fence
we're going to go inside that perimeter
now to get a glimpse on the
preparations that are underway for an
inauguration day that will be
unlike any other in american history
soldiers instead of visitors some 25 000
members of the national guard are
securing the capitol grounds
there has been some concern about a
potential inside threat
as not everyone is happy with the new
president
it's a sticky situation as far as
politically and uh
of course i have my own i have my own
thoughts politically but
in uniform you know i can't convey them
but i'm here to do a job i'm here to
follow
what our organization is doing and then
we're carrying on with that mission
[Music]
ladies and gentlemen the president-elect
of the united states
joseph r biden jr on the west side of
the u.s capitol
some normalcy is coming back rehearsals
and sound checks where two weeks ago
thousands of trump supporters stormed
the symbol
of american democracy
the rehearsals for the inauguration
ceremony were just completed and on this
very long usually thousands gathered to
cheer for their new president
well this year many things will be
different
fear of an attack on the president means
a ceremony with hardly any guests
the national mall will remain shut down
and authorities ask citizens to stay far
away
for the sake of their own safety
in the downtown area buildings have been
boarded up again
after a year of protests and a pandemic
these views have become a common sight
for many washingtonians but businesses
are suffering the business was bad from
last eight months
because we're in the commercial area
this is the commercial hub
all the offices around us are close and
the security has beefed up so much
you can't even we have a little bit of a
delivery business but
mostly all the roads are closed alive
behind fences and road
those who live here can't wait until the
new president
is sworn in
and for more i am joined by dw
correspondent william
gluecroft william what's expected on
inauguration day and how long could
these increased security measures last
well as we just saw in the report huge
security presence
more than double the number of national
guard troops at this inauguration than
normal inaugurations of course a
presidential inauguration a presidential
event is always going to be very high
security but there's all these extra
layers that we've been hearing about the
last
several days since that attack on the
u.s capitol
by a mostly white uh fundamentalist mob
really um and the threat the the acute
threat is being said that it might
extend till thursday a day after the
inauguration but let's not forget that
these
far-right groups these white supremacist
groups these anti-government groups they
did not start in this election cycle
they're not going to end
in this election cycle and while
washington has long been a very high
security zone especially since post 9 11
it was always looking towards an
international or particularly an
islamist threat
but if you watch a lot of that video
from inside the capitol and i've watched
a lot of it
a lot of the language and the religious
imagery um
from these people professing to be
christians very similar to the kind of
islamist extremism
that we saw that we've been you know
hearing threats about for for decades
now and that threat is going to going to
continue into the biden administration
as fbi and law enforcement officials
have long said
has long been a threat towards the
united states a pretty bleak picture
you're painting
um also i'd like to ask you about
another aspect here
we know that outgoing president donald
trump has not been seen in public for a
week
what has he been up to
well as you mentioned at the top before
that report he
made the statement that they were he was
going to allow travel especially
from europe again because the united
states is going to start requiring
negative test proof of negative tests if
you're coming into
uh the country the bizarre thing is of
course that's going to happen
starting january 26 which is six days
after
uh donald trump ceases being president
and joe biden becomes president of the
bite administration so that's just not
gonna happen
they're gonna continue uh you know
keeping the the corona dragnet so to
speak
uh very much uh present uh it should be
noted there's been really mixed signals
from the scientific community this
entire pandemic whether blanket
travel bans even work if they're the
most effective way
uh to control a virus but the cdc the
centers for disease control has said
that
by march they're fearing that the
dominant strain infecting people and
spreading in the united states is going
to be this
extra extra virulence strain that we've
seen starting
uh in england in the last several weeks
and that's what they're trying to
prevent
william just quickly um trump planning
to pardon as many as a hundred people in
his
last day in office according to reports
what are you hearing
that's right and i think more
importantly on who might be on the list
is who doesn't appear to be on that list
which is many of the controversial
figures in trump's inner circle members
of his family who have
not been charged with any crimes but
could theoretically be preemptively
pardoned even donald trump himself
preemptively pardoned which would be of
course
very constitutionally questionable and
also his aides are saying don't do that
because it would incriminate him it
would be basically an admission of
wrongdoing
uh but he's still president through noon
on wednesday and he can
effectively do whatever he wants in that
realm of of pardoning
we'll have to see what actually comes
out of his announcements
william bluecroft breaking it down for
us thank you
we're now to jesus christ and donald
trump evangelical christians they played
a
prominent role in the storming of the
capital on january 6 and they have
counted among donald trump's most
devoted
supporters during his presidency
exit polls show that three-quarters of
white evangelicals
voted for trump in november a number
virtually unchanged
since 2016. they stood behind the
president despite the multiple
accusations of sexual assault against
him and his repeated lies
to the american people
so how can we explain this zealous
devotion to a leader who's an
unrepentant
sinner my next guest says it may have
not so much to do with prayer and more
to do with power
catherine stewart is the author of the
book the power worshipers inside
the dangerous rise of religious
nationalism
catherine joins me tonight kevin it's
good to have you on the program
when we talk about trump's base
we are including evangelical christians
who share a vision
of the us and and that vision correct me
if i'm wrong here but
that vision would render separation of
church and state
meaningless that's absolutely right
christian nationalism uh is central to
any explanation
of the crisis that we're seeing in
america today you really can't
explain how trump came to power and
how so many other leaders uh on the sort
of
republican side of the political aisle
are hostile to democracy
unless you know something about uh this
movement
and the attraction to donald trump
um it it can't come from his religious
convictions i mean this is a man who has
bragged about
rarely if ever going to church i mean is
this where
religious strains merge
with those in a culture war
in the united states is that what we see
absolutely it's a form of identity
politics and that it ties the idea of
america to specific
religious and cultural identities so
christian nationalism let's make clear
it's not a religion
it's um a radically anti-democratic
political ideology that makes use of
religion it sort of exploits religion
for political purposes and it's also a
device for mobilizing
people to vote in support of the hyper
conservative candidates that the
movement favors
uh and it's um you know i mentioned
earlier it's radically anti-democratic
it's
you know i use the term religious
nationalism in the subtitle of my book
because it makes clear it's similarities
with other forms of
religious nationalism around the world
so when you see leaders like
putin in russia or erdogan and turkey
or orban in hungary when these
leaders bind themselves to conservative
religious authorities in other countries
in order to
consolidate a more authoritarian form of
political power
we rightly see this as a form of
religious nationalism that's what we saw
with donald trump he was basically
exploiting religion for political
purposes
and is there an is there a next
generation
in u.s politics that represents an even
more developed sense of of this
yeah religious nationalism i'm thinking
for example of josh
hawley in the us congress
absolutely you know leaders like josh
hawley and ted cruz
and many other republican leaders uh are
also exploiting uh the
rhetoric of religious nationalism trying
to
draw people to their side and often they
do it
by um through these so-called culture
wars through these issues like abortion
or same-sex marriage and the like
they know very well if you can get
people to vote on one or two issues
you can control their vote you know over
the last decade that i've been
researching my
this movement i go to innumerable
right-wing uh and christian national
strategy meetings and gatherings uh
and um and events like this and
many of the movement leaders will talk
about how important it is to create
single
issue voters because they know if they
can get the rank and file to sort of
play along and vote on abortion
they can control their vote and then
they use it to enact a wildly
anti-democratic um agenda and also an
agenda
that's not just about abortion has a lot
to do with economic policy and foreign
policy and things that those
sort of um you know anti-abortion voters
may not themselves agree with
yeah and this agenda of course
oftentimes it ends up in the courts and
there we talk about maybe the legacy
of donald trump he was able to appoint a
record number of federal judges he
appointed three supreme court justices
they are all conservative supreme court
judges social conservatives
so we're talking about these people
being around for the next 20 to 40 years
to interpret
legislation and laws should americans
be worried absolutely i mean i think
we're going to be dealing with
trump's legacy in the courts for quite
some time to come and if you look also
at the
judges that he appointed a lot of them
are um
have been nurtured by these sort of
right-wing
legal organizations like the federalist
society which plays an enormous role
in uh finding and nurturing uh
legal uh candidates and promoting them
for
for uh different appointments and sort
of sustaining their careers
and then um you know you also have a lot
of
trump appointees who have worked for
right-wing legal
or christian nationalist legal
organizations including the alliance
defending freedom
which is known as a sort of legal
juggernaut of the christian right
and again they don't just take
right-wing positions on the so-called
culture wars
like el you know uh same-sex marriage
and abortion
they are advocating for sort of um
policies that i think it's really
under-appreciated the extent to which
the republican party and uh has allied
itself with this sort of far-right
libertarian economic wing of the
republican party
and um you know a lot of the big ticket
funders of the movement
many of the people sort of pouring money
into the these organizations
are as committed to sort of uh almost
like a free market fundamentalism as
they are
to right-wing positions in the so-called
culture wars
yeah and it's just it's amazing too when
you think all of this comes together and
the notion of separation of church and
state
just yeah goes up in smoke
catherine stewart author of the power
worshipers inside the dangerous rise of
religious nationalism
catherine we appreciate your time and
your insights tonight thank you
thank you for having me