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Krapish, a 6-foot-7 bail enforcement officer from Baytown, Texas, ignored the Black Lives Matter protesters down the block. A frayed Texas Rangers ball cap shielded him from the bad weather. These were just minor irritations to a man excited about the prospect that Trump’s inauguration would set the country on a new and positive course.
“I’m just an average American,” Krapish said. “There’s something different about Trump that makes the rest of America feel good.”
That “something different” is what drew thousands of supporters here Friday to celebrate the improbable ascent of a business mogul and reality TV star whose populist speech and brash behavior set him apart from his 44 predecessors in the White House. That “something different” is also what drew thousands of protesters, who reject Trump’s policy stances and temperament as dangerous at home and on the global stage.
With half-empty subway cars and sparse crowds on the Mall, Trump’s subdued welcome stood in marked contrast to outgoing President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, when tens of thousands of people flooded into Washington to witness the swearing-in of the first black president.
This time around, there’s a palpable trepidation, detectable at times even among the Trump fans sporting red caps and American flags as they filed toward the inauguration grounds.
Take 19-year-old Caroline Lawe, who grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and who came to the inauguration with a couple of friends. She voted for Trump, though he wasn’t her first choice among Republican candidates. She said she still harbors some reservations about his temperament, but not enough to dissuade her from heading to the Mall to bear witness to a moment that defied virtually every poll and prediction this election year.
“It’s part of history no matter what your political views are, to be here with everyone and to feel the momentum,” said Lawe, a sophomore studying nursing at Catholic University in Washington.
Christina Jeffrey, of Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a conservative political scientist who suspects her political stances were behind her dismissal from an adjunct teaching position at Wofford College after Trump’s visit there last November. Jeffrey said her mother was a journalist who documented the rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s; she takes her mother’s experience as a cautionary tale for the rise of Islamist extremism.
That’s why Jeffrey is on board with Trump’s platform, including his staunchly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim positions.
“I expect him to do all the things he said he was going to do,” she said. “I’m perfectly happy with his program.”
Glenn McCall, 63, of Rock Hill, South Carolina, has been working in and around GOP politics since the early 1990s, and remembers the last time in 2004 when the Republican Party controlled the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, back in 2004. He said more Americans should give Trump a chance to make good on his campaign promises.
“We should enjoy this time,” McCall said, “but as soon as the parade is over, it’s time to get to work, because the real fun comes when we start getting our policies through and change this country for the better.”
