Nick Riccardi for AP:

All the living former presidents were there and the outgoing president amicably greeted his successor, who gave a speech about the country’s bright future and who left to the blare of a brass band.

At first glance, President Donald Trump’s second inauguration seemed like a continuation of the country’s nearly 250-year-long tradition of peaceful transfers of power, essential to its democracy. And there was much to celebrate: Trump won a free and fair election last fall, and his supporters hope he will be able to fix problems at the border, end the war in Ukraine and get inflation under control.

Still, on Monday, the warning signs were clear…..

After giving a speech pledging that “never again” would the government “persecute political opponents,” Trump then gave a second, impromptu address to a crowd of supporters. The president lamented that his inaugural address had been sanitized, said he would shortly pardon the Jan. 6 rioters and fumed at last-minute preemptive pardons issued by outgoing President Joe Biden to the members of the congressional committee that investigated the attack.

“I did have a couple of things to say that were extremely controversial,” Trump told the crowd in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. It was the same space that had filled with rows of National Guard troops sleeping on the hard floors for weeks in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

Hours later, Trump followed through on a campaign promise to pardon those involved in the attack — some 1,500 of his supporters, including ones who had assaulted police officers. That came after an extraordinary pardon issued by Biden — announced by the White House as he greeted Trump at the inaugural ceremony — for several members of Biden’s extended family. The 11th hour Biden pardons were a response to Trump’s continual threats to carry out a campaign of retribution against his political opponents.

The head-spinning developments of Trump’s first day back in power suggested there will be no lack of controversy during his second term.

“The form is normal,” Rick Hasen, a University of California, Los Angeles law professor, said of Trump’s inaugural. “The substance is not.”

Hasen said the pardons of those who tried to violently overturn the results of the 2020 election were particularly worrying.

“It’s harder to imagine a greater affront to the rule of law than to give pardons to those who tried to overthrow the government,” he said.

Andy Craig, a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, was aghast that Trump received the full, respectful pomp and circumstance of a peaceful transition that he tried to deny Biden. “This is a surreal situation in a lot of ways and I get there is no rulebook to follow, but I think people are frustrated, rightly so, with a tone deaf ‘everything is normal’ approach,” Craig said…