Halfway to the White House, the black armoured “Beast” carrying America’s new president rolled to a halt. Out stepped Donald Trump with his wife, Melania. Their ten-year-old son, Barron, tall and awkward as a teenager, walked at his side.
After a day of ceremony it was a moment of pure triumph. The cavalcade just happened to have stopped outside Mr Trump’s prized property, the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office building. “Right next to the White House,” he had boasted during a presidential debate. “So if I don’t get there one way, I’m going to get to Pennsylvania Avenue another.”
Now he was stepping past its front door as president of the United States, past crowds that were, on a day of protests, mostly filled with his supporters. He waved and punched the air.
Mary Theis, 82, an estate agent from Ohio, pushed forward in the crush. She had shaken Mr Trump’s hand at a rally in South Carolina, and helped to run the Women for Trump organisation in Trumbull County. “It’s the first time since Nixon that a Republican won Trumbull County,” she said.
Mrs Theis caught a glimpse of him between two taller women in front of her. “It was a real thrill,” she said.
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She had seen him sworn in from a seat on the National Mall. Other supporters had crowded into a bar off Pennsylvania Avenue, where Mr Trump appeared on big screens. Some removed their Make America Great Again hats in a gesture of respect.
“Watch him,” whispered Becky Lucas, who had travelled from Virginia to see the man she had fought for being sworn in to the highest office in the land. The day before the inauguration, when he was at 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 now, as Mr 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 in the Battle of Shiloh, she said. He was 13, marching with the Confederate forces of General Albert Johnson in April 1862 into what was to be the bloodiest battle yet in the Civil War.
On the screens above the bar, Mr Trump was beginning his address. “We have defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own,” he said. The bar erupted in cheers.
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“My niece’s husband works on the border,” Ms Lucas, 60, said. “He helped catch the nation’s second most wanted drug cartel member. They got cellphones, money, drugs.” It’s a battle down there, she added. “The Mexicans slash their tyres. He’s putting his life at risk every week. We need a wall.”
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 Avenue, across the road from the towering white façade of the Trump International Hotel. They bore an adapted version of the old blue and red “Hope” poster that greeted President Obama’s inauguration eight years ago: the image now was of a 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 African-American woman said, holding a 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 should be 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 woman from a television 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: “I know we have Secret Service people here to protect me if they do.”
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A teacher from Key West, named William Lafferman, stood by watching. He had come to protest, “to remind the administration that there are other views out here”, he said. “Was it Nixon or Johnson who said, ‘If it wasn’t for the protesters outside my door, I would have nuked Vietnam’?” the man beside him said: “I think it was Nixon.”
“There’s a point to being here,” Mr Lafferman, who is in his fifties, said. At the middle school in Key West he teaches government. He came 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,” he said. “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’.” The object of a grandmother’s affections was spotted, fleetingly, through a darkened window as he rode down Pennsylvania Avenue in a cavalcade of cars before the swearing-in ceremony.
“I saw both of them, Obama and Trump,” Shankar Mishra, 52, said. Originally from Delhi, he came to the United States 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 Mr 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 for the expected pepper spray. “What happens in North Dakota?” shouted one. “We get pepper-sprayed! They target our women!
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“Our women get pepper-sprayed. Our women get shot with rubber bullets!” the protesters continued.
“We’re going to protest for four more years!”
Old boys’ club joins the show
They are members of an exclusive club that gathers every four years and they sat, chatting and laughing, spouses at their sides (Will Pavia writes).
The ex-presidents were addressed by President Trump in order: “President Carter (92), President Clinton (70), President Bush (70), President Obama (55).” One more was there in spirit. George Bush Sr, 92, who has been in hospital, sent a note of apology: “My doctor says if I sit outside in January, it will likely put me six feet under.”
Mr Trump said: “Every four years we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.”
