WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump took the oath of office to become the 47th president of the United States on Monday, capping a remarkable political comeback that he said would enable him “to make America greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before.”

The man who served as the 45th president painted a dark portrait of the challenges facing the country without his leadership and said he had overcome many obstacles — including an assassination attempt — because he had been “saved by God to make America great again.”

Trump became only the second person in the nation’s nearly 250-year history to regain the White House after losing it — following Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to become president after the Civil War and the last to hold the post before the dawn of the 20th century.

The Republican’s ascension to the most powerful office in the world represented an astounding resurrection for a man twice impeached during his first term, then held liable for both civil and criminal misconduct during the years he tried to regain the White House. He has become the first convicted felon to serve as president.

The former businessman and reality TV star returns to the White House this week with an approval rating above 50%, marking his best showing in the polls since his unexpected and divisive rise to power in 2016.

Organizers of the ceremony, driven indoors by frigid temperatures, chose the theme “Our Enduring Democracy,” an ideal that had been challenged four years ago, when Trump refused to attend the inauguration or accept that former Vice President Joe Biden had defeated him.

Every living former president attended Monday’s event — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They were joined by world leaders including former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and recently elected Argentinian President Javier Milei.

The chief executives of Meta, X, and Amazon sat in front of the president-elect’s entire Cabinet — a nod to the importance Trump has given the heads of some of the most powerful companies and social media platforms.

Also occupying prime seats were conservative business and political figures, including SpaceX and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, ultimate fighting impresario Dana White and Joe Rogan, the online commentator.

Trump spoke for nearly 30 minutes to the inaugural gathering, a nationwide audience and supporters who were forced to gather in Capital One Arena in Washington after the planned outdoor inauguration was canceled.

Sticking almost entirely to his prepared remarks, the president ranged widely in his tone — from recriminations about his purported mistreatment by Biden and others, to a pledge to take unprecedented measures at the U.S. Mexico border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” to loftier pledges centered on restoring America’s “manifest destiny” to lead the world.

The address began with Trump returning to a theme of American exceptionalism that he unveiled in 2015, when he began his first presidential campaign.

“The Golden Age of America begins right now,” he said. “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer during every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first.”

At 78 years and 220 days, Trump is the oldest individual ever to become president, surpassing Biden, who had been just a couple of months past 78 when he took the oath of office in 2021. The Republican president, who will benefit from having GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, said his leadership was needed at a time the Democrats had led the country badly astray.

“As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust,” Trump said. “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.”

Trump blamed lax immigration policy, which allowed illegal entries to the U.S. to soar early in Biden’s term, for much of the country’s trouble.

The president pledged to reverse that “immediately,” saying he would declare “a national emergency at our southern border.” He said he also would launch a long-promised deportation of “millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

He pledged to send troops to the border to execute his order and restore a “remain in Mexico” policy that forbid asylum seekers — some of whom fled criminal and political persecution — from staying in America while their cases are heard.

Trump also promised fast action on a second pillar of his successful campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris — tamping down inflation. He said he would rein in federal spending and lower energy prices by declaring another national emergency, to clear the path for a bonanza of gas and oil drilling.

Those actions will come as he reverses the Green New Deal, the package of reforms and incentives that Democrats approved to promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. He also promised to “revoke” government support for electric vehicles, though it was not clear what that would mean.

“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said.

Democrats have pledged to continue their support for alternative fuels, particularly in states including California, which have all but eliminated coal-fired power plants and helped power a shift to electric cars.

Trump said two new government departments would also help supercharge his economic agenda. A new External Revenue Service will exact tariffs from other countries, bringing “massive amounts of money” into the U.S. Treasury. And the Department of Government Efficiency will cut unneeded fat from the federal government.

Some analysts predict the high tariffs Trump suggests will be recouped by foreign companies which will charge more for their products — money that will ultimately be paid by U.S. consumers.

Much of the new president’s speech centered on what he says has been an oppressive federal government, and his pledge to get it out of people’s lives.

He and other Republicans fumed at Biden administration measures to limit the ability of skeptics to, for instance, question the effectiveness of COVID vaccines. While Democrats said they were trying to protect public health by preventing the spread of misinformation, Trump deemed it “censorship.”

On Monday, he said he would sign an executive order “to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back Free Speech to America.”

Trump also did not miss the opportunity to engage on some of the hot-button cultural issues that fueled his presidential bid. He suggested he would end diversity, equity and inclusion policies that were put in place to reverse a history of racism and sexism. “We will forge a society,” he said, “that is color-blind and merit-based.”

He added that “as of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

Ever ready to break with past practice, Trump reiterated several other changes he plans, beginning with renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and including the restoration of Mt. McKinley as the name of the Alaskan peak. It has been renamed Denali, an Indigenous name meaning “the Great One.”

And he also repeated his intention to reverse a more than century-old agreement under which Panama has been allowed to operate the Panama Canal. Saying U.S. ships had been overcharged for use of the crucial waterway, Trump vowed: “We’re taking it back.”

Monday’s ceremony followed protocols established over hundreds of years. Trump and his wife, Melania, came to the White House, where they were greeted by Biden and his wife, Jill. The two men, bitter enemies, smiled and posed for photos.

Yet the scene also felt remarkable, coming four years after Trump’s followers stormed the Capitol and attempted to halt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election — based on the inaccurate claim that the Republican had been cheated out of the presidency.

Trump subsequently declined to attend Biden’s 2021 inauguration, also breaking with norms that had made the U.S. and its democracy the envy of much of the world.

Also extraordinary: Biden’s action in the final hours of his presidency to issue preemptive pardons to protect members of his family and some of Trump’s best-known adversaries from the retribution that the incoming president promised to unleash.

Pardoned by Biden early Monday were Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top medical advisor to Biden; Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Liz Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman who joined Democrats in trying to remove Trump from office.

Also pardoned were three of Biden’s siblings and two of their spouses, an action that took effect as the outgoing president participated in the inauguration.

“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” Biden said in what would be his last statement as president. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”

Trump’s opponents have long reviled him as a man of low character. Multiple women have accused him of sexual abuses; with one, E. Jean Carroll, winning a civil judgment against him last year. A jury also convicted him of multiple felonies for altering records in order to cover up hush money payments to a pornographic film star, who said she had an extramarital fling with him.

Yet on Monday religious leaders heralded Trump as a man delivered by God to lead America for a second time.

During his invocation, the Rev. Franklin Graham said God saved Trump.

“We come to say thank you, oh God,” Graham said. “Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand.”

In a benediction at the end of the ceremony, the Rev. Lorenzo Sewell of Detroit also said God had delivered Trump so that “America would begin to dream again.” He then invoked the “I have a dream” speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday fell on Monday.

Trump also claimed he was feeling the power of the Almighty.

Near the start of his speech, he claimed that he had been “tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history.” (Historians were quick to point out the tremendous trials visited on other presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated after winning the Civil War and ending slavery.)

Trump then referred to the assassination attempt against him in July, when a rifleman’s bullet clipped his ear and came within inches of killing him in Butler, Pa.

“Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed, to take my life,” he said. “Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe, even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

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Mehta and Pinho reported from Washington and Rainey and Branson-Potts from Los Angeles.

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