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As a theme, it could be entitled “all the president’s friends”.
Donald Trump’s boast that “in this term, everybody wants to be my friend” – voiced at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago last month – is likely to be borne out in emphatic fashion at his second presidential inauguration on Monday.
As ever with Trump, there is a strong element of exaggeration. Not everyone wants to be his friend and detractors remain.
But the list of luminaries from the worlds of business, show business and even international politics attests to a transformed landscape compared to his first inauguration in 2017, when he was still the consummate outsider and – to many in the establishment – a renegade figure who struggled to attract big names.
The roll call also reads like a tribute to the incoming president’s love of billionaires.
So many wealthy donors have pledged maximum $1m contributions that Trump’s inauguration committee – having raised $170m – has run out of perks and cannot guarantee access to all those whose donation sizes should qualify them for VIP treatment.
Certain to gain access will be the world’s richest man, the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk – who is coincidentally now Trump’s most vocal supporter. Musk is expected to sit on the dais in front of the US Capitol alongside three other super-rich tech barons, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon; Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple; and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook and its parent company Meta.
Seated near Trump’s cabinet members, the trio’s presence may strike some as validation of Joe Biden’s farewell warning that the US is in danger of being taken over by a rich ruling oligarchy.
Biden himself will be there – despite Trump snubbing his inauguration four years ago – out of respect for America’s traditional peaceful transfers of power, as will the three other living former presidents, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, although his wife, Michelle, will be absent.
As symbolic as time-honoured democratic conventions may be the prominent role of the normally politics-shy Zuckerberg, who last week ditched his company’s fact-checking protocols and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programme in fealty to the president-elect’s preferences.
Zuckerberg – who did not attend Trump’s first inauguration or that of Biden – will attend an inaugural reception for Trump and his incoming vice-president, JD Vance.
Also there will be the Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson; Tilman Fertitta, a television personality and billionaire owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team who the president-elect recently nominated as ambassador to Italy; and Todd Ricketts, another wealthy businessman who is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team and a former finance chair of the Republican national committee.
Accompanying conspicuous wealth will be extravagant inauguration packages offered by high-end Washington hotels, some of which look like celebrations of excess. Most popular among them, according to Axios, is a $73,500 head-of-state package at the iconic Watergate complex – scene of the famous break-in that ultimately ended Richard Nixon’s presidency – that includes round-trip helicopter transport from New York to Washington and chauffeur-travel in an armoured luxury Mercedes-Maybach.
No Trump occasion would be complete without a nod to celebrity culture. With many musical artists, such as Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen having declared a preference for Kamala Harris during the election campaign, Trump has obtained the services of Carrie Underwood, who launched her career on American Idol, to sing America the Beautiful before he takes the oath of office. The classical singer Christopher Macchio will sing Oh America before Vance is sworn in.
Possibly just as meaningful for Trump – once a denizen of Studio 54, New York’s disco-era nightlife hub – is the agreement of the Village People, whose 1978 hit YMCA is a staple of Trump rallies and Mar-a-Lago gatherings, to perform at two inaugural events.
The band’s lead singer, Victor Willis, issued an almost apologetic explanation, saying its members would perform despite having supported Harris’s presidential bid.
“We believe that music is to be performed without regard to politics,” he wrote on Facebook. “Our song YMCA is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost.”
Among others slated to attend, according to TMZ, are Logan Paul, an influencer and professional wrestler; his brother Jake, a boxer who recently beat an ageing Mike Tyson in a lucrative bout screened on Netflix; Theo Von, a podcaster and standup comic; and Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
If proof were needed that Trump’s second inauguration represents a departure, it comes in the many invitations to international political dignitaries on the extreme and populist right. In the past, it has not been customary to invite politicians from abroad, with foreign countries being represented by ambassadors.
On the guest list this time, however, are a handful of heads of state or government who Trump likes (or wants to impress), but also lesser politicians with whom he feels an affinity.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has been invited but will almost certainly not attend. Beijing announced on Thursday that it was sending the vice-president, Han Zheng, in his place, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding populist leader Javier Milei is attending.
Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was also invited, but cannot attend since his passport has been confiscated as part of a coup investigation, and a judge ruled on Thursday that it would not be returned in case he used it to flee abroad. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s illiberal prime minister and EU bete noir, is also otherwise engaged.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has neo-fascist roots, is on the guest list and is understood to have confirmed her attendance.
Definitely going are Nigel Farage, Britain’s champion of Brexit and the leader of the anti-immigration Reform party, and Éric Zemmour, an ultranationalist, xenophobic polemicist with convictions for hate speech and an exponent of the far-right “great replacement” theory.
They will be joined by Tom van Grieken of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang and Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland’s national-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).
Absent and not invited will be figures from EU institutions that Trump has frequently criticised. The returning president, it seems clear, knows who he wants to be his friends.
