Friday's NBC Nightly News hyped how President Donald Trump supposedly lobbed "verbal grenades" in his inauguration address, as Hallie Jackson put it. Chuck Todd contended that the speech was "shockingly divisive for an inaugural," and quickly added that it was "unnecessarily divisive." Todd later underlined that Trump "insulted almost every living president that was there...which, to me, was so stunning." On CBS Evening News, Scott Pelley emphasized that "inauguration speeches are always about binding the wounds of the election and bringing the country together — and that's not what happened today." [video below]

NBC anchor Lester Holt brought on Todd and political analyst Nicolle Wallace for their reactions to the address. After twice calling it "divisive," the Meet the Press host outlined that "what's interesting here is that this was intentional....it was a call to arms to his supporters. And this is the message they sent — which is, we're going to be a little bit of a confrontational presidency. We were a confrontational campaign — that's what populist campaigns are — we're going to be a confrontational presidency."

Moments later, Todd contended that "this is a risk. He has got depth of support. He did not go for any breadth today. He needs to expand. This is a man who didn't win the popular vote. You wouldn't have known that today with this inaugural address....It's a gamble."

Jackson's report aired at the beginning of an added half hour of the NBC evening newscast. Holt led into the segment by pointing out that the speech "departed in major ways from speeches we've heard from those Capitol steps in the past." The journalist echoed Todd's earlier analysis by stating that "his speech to the nation: more a message to his movement." After dropping her "verbal grenades" phrase, Jackson played two clips of Trump supporters praising the address. She followed this by spotlighting how "critics hearing something much different, more divisive."

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The correspondent later proclaimed that "the speech signaling how the President will govern — unflinchingly populist, unabashedly nationalist — whether Washington likes it or not." She concluded the pre-recorded portion of the segment by detailing, "if not inspirational to everyone, it was intentional at the least — deliberate; pointed; and, by definition, presidential."

CBS's Pelley led his segment with Face the Nation host John Dickerson with his assertion that "inauguration speeches are always about binding the wounds of the election and bringing the country together — and that's not what happened today." Dickerson replied, "No. This was straight out of Donald Trump's campaign." He continued that "there were signs that he was going to talk about unity...He offered unity, but only on his terms; and then, he destabilized things further by attacking Republicans and Democrats — the politicians — by saying they were the ones who sold out those people in the audience."

The transcript of the Chuck Todd segment and the Hallie Jackson report from NBC Nightly News; along with the John Dickerson segment from CBS Evening News — all of which aired on January 20, 2017: