This dark day for the United States paradoxically strengthened their loyalty to Donald Trump. It is the result of a rewriting of this event which almost buried the political career of the billionaire exiled in Florida. Four years later, the former president made a triumphant return to Washington. Even his former vice president, Mike Pence, whom the Capitol attackers promised to hang for refusing to derail the electoral process, will attend the inauguration. At his side, outgoing President Joe Biden and his vice-president Kamala Harris, unsuccessful candidate against Donald Trump, as well as former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Rare elected Democratic officials will shun the ceremony. The three richest men on the planet – Elon Musk, who put his fortune and his X network at the service of Donald Trump’s massive disinformation campaign, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon), who recently joined – will be in a good place. The organizing committee for these celebrations raised a record $170 million. But even million-dollar donations don’t guarantee entry.
China courted
Contrary to custom, Donald Trump also invited foreign heads of state, in particular the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who will send his vice-president Han Zheng. China is the great rival of the United States, but its economic power is indispensable to big American bosses. Some ideological allies will be present, such as the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, or the Argentine President, Javier Milei, as well as several leaders of the European extreme right. On the other hand, no trace of America’s traditional allies.
The inauguration was to take place on the same steps of the Capitol stormed by the rioters of January 6, 2021. But that was without taking into account the polar conditions that will fall on the capital. Donald Trump ordered the ceremony to be held inside the Capitol. The future president, aged 78, even older than Joe Biden when he took office, wants to “protect” his supporters who would have had to wait for hours in the freezing cold. The Congressional services had announced that they had distributed 220,000 sesames.
-Small consolation, after being sworn in on Monday around noon (6 p.m. Swiss), Donald Trump promised to join 20,000 of his supporters gathered in an indoor stadium in the center of Washington. The most motivated plan to queue before dawn for a chance to enter.
“Best deals”
Firefighter in Nevada, Bill Snyder, in Washington for the first time, takes this change of program philosophically. He will watch the inauguration on television at the home of a former congressman. He is convinced that Donald Trump will succeed in lowering the cost of living in the United States. Because it will conclude “better deals with our commercial partners”. “Never seen such disorganization,” complains Betsy Kramer, a major voter from Georgia, who had not received a ticket to attend the inauguration. “At least there is the ball organized by the Republicans of my state,” she consoles herself.
Behind the kilometers of fences installed by Hispanic immigrants in a city under siege, the little Trumpist people were able to see the White House, occupied until Monday morning by Joe Biden. Visitors immortalize themselves for the photo with their red hat, the best-selling item in Washington these days among the jumble of objects glorifying Donald Trump. “Our president will finally secure the border!” Tasha Barreda, from San Antonio, Texas, is sure of it. She also believes that the future president will do nothing to impose the ban on abortion, in force in his state, in the rest of the United States, as he promised during the campaign. “When you come to Texas, you know what to expect. At home, we hold on to traditional and family values,” proclaims this Latina woman.
Low resistance
Keith Mazarac broke the bank to come to Washington from Louisiana and is poorly hiding his disappointment at the turn of events. “It’s the most important inauguration since George Washington,” he raves, comparing the 47th President of the United States with the first. Failing to see him take the oath, he came to observe the thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators who marched in the streets of Washington on Saturday. “The president has nothing to worry about,” he sneered, satisfied, while hundreds of thousands of people converged in Washington against Donald Trump during the Republican’s first inauguration in 2017.
“Lock him up,” says the crowd, while the future president has escaped justice. “America is not great,” protesters chant, in contrast to the slogan “Make America Great Again.” “How can we say that, we have liberated Europe from fascism,” says Keith Mazarac. “The left wants to rewrite history, we must not condemn slavery, the country was built thanks to it, whatever we think,” he argues. “Donald Trump’s supporters cannot stand being criticized for our country, they feel threatened in their identity,” retorts Jeffrey Harlan, a demonstrator, who has been heavily involved for a year against the Biden administration’s support for “genocide” in Gaza. “The ideals of the United States are far from being realized. We will continue to fight. Even if it will be even more difficult to be heard over the next four years,” he fears.
Facing the Capitol sparkling in the distance, the anti-Trump procession separates at the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the president who abolished slavery and won the Civil War. There also where the African-American pastor Martin Luther King said, in 1963, that he had a “dream” of equality. Two demonstrators prepare to return home to neighboring Virginia. They say they are less alone. “Donald Trump will be a transactional president, that is to say motivated by making more and more money at the expense of Americans and the most vulnerable,” says Carol King, a retired dietitian. “He has a feeling of omnipotence and the courts will have their work cut out to curb his worst actions.”
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