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Immediately after Donald Trump finished his Inaugural Address, CNN’s Jake Tapper called it “one of the most radical inaugural speeches we’ve ever heard.” His colleague John King added the speech offered “A dark view. Even a pessimistic view of where we are at the moment.” This is in sharp contrast to how the CNN welcomed Barack Obama’s 2013 Inaugural Address. Back then the hosts were wowed by the “marvelous” and “iconic” address in the vein of Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln. At the time, David Gergen gushed: “He’s come along with a statement that firmly addresses a progressive, liberal agenda that's very much in the tradition of King and of Lincoln, and he has rallied his base.” CNN historian David Brinkley hailed Obama’s speech “Gigantic. And he connected it all to the patriots of 1776 that we keep widening in our democracy. And he made those places almost like battlefield spots in American history, like Oxford, Mississippi, or Normandy or Iwo Jima. And it's an iconic speech.”