As US President Barack Obama prepares to leave office on January 20, here are 10 things his presidency may be remembered for.
President-elect Donald Trump, left, and his wife Melania Trump arrive to the « Make America Great Again Welcome Concert » at the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington. (Evan Vucci, AP)
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Washington – On the morning 19 months ago when Donald Trump
descended the escalator in his glitzy Manhattan tower, waving to onlookers who
lined the rails, many Americans knew little about him beyond that he was very
rich and had a thing for firing people on a reality television show.
No one can plausibly say they knew that the man who launched his
candidacy that day would be elected the nation’s 45th president. As Trump
prepares to take the oath of office on Friday, many Americans still can’t quite
believe that a presidency that still seems
almost bizarrely improbable becomes a reality on Friday.
« I thought it was a joke. He’d run, he’d lose early and he’d
be out, » said Christopher Thoms-Bauer, 20, a bookkeeper and college
student from Bayonne, New Jersey, who originally backed Florida Senator Marco
Rubio’s Republican candidacy.
Then, Thoms-Bauer recalled, came the night in November when he
joined friends in a diner after a New Jersey Devils hockey game and watched,
stunned, as Trump eked out wins in key states.
« Having this realisation
that he was really going to become president was really just a surreal
moment, » said Thoms-Bauer, who gave his write-in vote to Evan McMullin, a
former CIA agent who ran as a conservative alternative to Trump. « It still
doesn’t make sense. »
For all the country’s political divisions, plenty of people on
both sides of the aisle share that
disbelief.
« I thought there was no way he could win, » said Crissy
Bayless, a Rhode Island photographer who on Thursday tweeted a picture of the
Statue of Liberty holding her face in her hands, despairing over Trump’s
imminent inauguration.
« How am I feeling? Wow.. disgusted. nauseous and honestly
like I’m in a nightmare, » Bayless, 38, wrote in a conversation via email.
Implausible and surreal
When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, the election of the
nation’s first black president felt to many like one of the most improbable
moments in the nation’s political history. The idea of the election of a white
billionaire born of privilege feels implausible to many in very different ways
— and that may say as much about the country as it does about Trump.
When Trump announced his candidacy, Kayla Coursey recognised him as the developer who had tried
and failed to build a golf course she’d opposed in her hometown of
Charlottesville, Virginia. She recalled him as stubborn and resistant to
pressure from local residents and officials. That, she said made his candidacy
for president feel like a joke. Trump’s election felt downright surreal, she
said.
In the weeks since
« there was always the hope that things will somehow magically become
better. However, now we know (on Friday) at noon we’re going to be welcoming
President Trump, which is surreal in and of itself, » said Coursey, a
college student in Roanoke, Virginia.
David Sawyers, a 42-year-old truck unloader from Grindstone,
Pennsylvania, who backed Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary
before voting for Trump, said the big crowds that turned out for the
candidate’s rallies convinced him the billionaire could win. But he never felt
certain, not when he recalled how Al Gore had won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the presidency to George W. Bush.
« You follow history, » said Sawyers, who’s happy with the
outcome, « and there are some points where you definitely know history is
being made and tomorrow is one of those times. »
Sawyers will be working during Friday’s inauguration, so he plans
to record it and watch it later. But others said they remain so stunned by
Trump’s election it will be best if they turn away.
Tyler Wilcox, a 23-year-old musician in Riverton, Utah, has been
dreading inauguration day. He lists his location on Twitter as « Not My
President » and is planning to avoid all coverage of the ceremonies.
« I just feel like it’s, I guess you can say, the beginning of
the end, » he said.
Deep worry
And Coursey, who identifies as « queer » and is deeply
worried by the threat she believes Trump’s administration poses to lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, said she would avoid joining other
students in the dorm television lounge to watch the inauguration.
« I’m concerned that I’d be just a crying mess in the corner,
or that somebody would say something and I wouldn’t hold my tongue or I’d end
up getting in some kind of a physical argument, » she said.
Instead, Coursey said, she plans to search for a recording of
Trump’s speech once it’s over, when she can watch it in private That
way, she figures, she can pause it in uncomfortable moments when the presidency
she never imagined becomes a little too real.
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