Supporters from across America shed tears of joy
Donald Trump stood with his hand raised, and in a packed bar by Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, the drinkers and diners fell silent. Some removed their Make America Great Again hats in a gesture of respect.
‘‘Watch him,’’ whispered Becky Lucas, who had travelled up from Virginia to see the man she had followed and fought for being sworn into the highest office in the land. She had been watching him for months.
The day before the inauguration, when Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, ‘‘he had his hand on his heart, he was patting his heart’’, she said. ‘‘I started crying. I know he really does love this country.’’
She became tearful again as Trump took the oath. ‘‘It’s the country that we love, that our forefathers fought for, this land,’’ she said. One of her ancestors was a drummer boy for the Confederates in the Battle of Shiloh during the American Civil War.
On the screens above the bar, Trump was beginning his address. ‘‘We have defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own,’’ he said. The bar erupted in cheers.
‘‘My niece’s husband works on the border,’’ Lucas, 60, said. ‘‘He helped catch the nation’s secondmost wanted drug cartel member. They got cellphones, money, drugs.’’
It’s a battle down there, she said. ‘‘The Mexicans come and slash their tyres. He’s putting his life at risk every week. No one knows what’s going on there. We need a wall.’’
Outside the bar, Trump supporters pressed against the windows. All over the capital, there were pockets of jubilation and protest. Sometimes they were side by side.
‘‘Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Donald Trump has got to go!’’ chanted a large crowd on Pennsylvania Ave, across the road from the towering white facade of the Old Post Office building, which is now the Trump International Hotel. They carried an adapted version of the old blue and red ‘‘Hope’’ poster that greeted Barack Obama’s inauguration eight years ago: the image now was of a Muslim woman in a headscarf.
A small group of Trump supporters had advanced on their rear: now, members of each side were engaging in an argument about police brutality, debating the number of black and white people killed.
‘‘Well, police need better training,’’ a middle-aged white woman from the Trump side said.
‘‘I think that’s also a big issue, I really do,’’ a young AfricanAmerican woman said, holding a home-made sign that implored ‘‘Make America Love Again’’. The two women hugged.
‘‘This is the kind of discussion we should be having,’’ shouted Daniel Roth, 17. ‘‘This is the kind of discussion they having in Congress.’’
A beefy white schoolboy in a Make America Great Again hat, he had come to Washington ‘‘to support America and the ideas on which the country is founded’’.
Wasn’t he nervous, engaging in these battles with protesters, a TV reporter station asked. ‘‘I’m a man of grit,’’ he replied. ‘‘I do what I want, what the Constitution allows me to do. I know they are not going to hit me.’’ Then he added: should be ‘‘I know we have Secret Service people here to protect me if they do.’’ Besides which, ‘‘I’m the captain of my high school debating team’’.
William Lafferman, a middleschool teacher from Key West, Florida, stood by watching. He had come to protest, ‘‘to remind the administration that there are other views out here’’.
Lafferman teaches government; he had vaguely considered making a live broadcast to his class from his spot beside the parade. In the end he decided against it, though he did come bearing a letter from one of his pupils who is a staunch Trump supporter.
‘‘He wrote this note for me to give to the president. It says, ‘My grandmother really likes you and thinks you are going to become the greatest president. If she weren’t married, she would marry you. I hope you do a good job’.’’
‘‘I saw both of them, Obama and Trump,’’ Shankar Mishra, 52, said. Originally from Delhi in India, he came to the US 35 years ago as a student.
‘‘I came here today to be part of the history,’’ he said. ‘‘We came for Obama, we came for Bush, we came for Clinton and we have come for Trump.’’
His son Alex is 18 and a Trump supporter. Watching Trump go past, Alex said he looked fabulous. ‘‘Every time you see him, he always looks magnificent.’’
His father, a businessman, was more ambivalent. ‘‘Some things I don’t agree, some things I do,’’ he said. ‘‘But I did vote for him.’’
Nearer the White House, a group of demonstrators fresh from the protest camp at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota sat across part of a road. Most wore ski goggles to protect them against the expected police pepper spray.
‘‘Our women get peppersprayed. Our women get shot with rubber bullets!’’ the protesters said. ‘‘We’re going to protest for four more years!’’