DJT Day 1 - A day of infamy ...

Today was the day that I never thought would come - the day Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America. It makes my blood pressure skyrocket just to type those words. The day was painful, dark, and bleak from beginning to end.

My heart went out to Michelle Obama (as well as Barack and the Bidens) who was gracious and full of grace as she greeted and hosted the President-Elect and his wife and had to pretend that the day her guests moved into the White House was a day she had looked forward to and enjoyed.

Watching the individuals entering and seated on the platform in front of the Capitol was something like witnessing a massive car wreck in motion. It was horrifying but you could not help but watch the misery unfolding before your eyes. The anguish on the faces of Bill and Hillary Clinton (and many other Democrats and even some of the Republicans) was palpable as they tried to smile and act as though they were just two more spectators in the crowd. It is difficult to feel sorry for either of them but that did not make it any easier to watch them. While there were lots of sad faces seated around the podium, the worst part of the spectacle was the gloating from Trump supporters and the hypocritical late-comers -- the smirk on Paul Ryan's face comes to mind. It was depressing to think that those syncofants and power-hungry politicians and former Never-Trumpers who have been so belatedly quick to reverse themselves and surround Trump are now the very legislators upon whom we may have to depend for the checks and balances we will so desperately need.

Then there was the speech. Before he took the oath, the television camera was focused close up on the President-Elect. I could not help but wonder what in the world was going through his mind as he kept turning and looking at President Obama throughout the ceremony. You hope he is weighing in his mind the enormous responsibility he is about to assume and the sacred duty of stewardship of the values and traditions so vital to the continuation of our Republic. You pray that he is having humble thoughts and wondering if he is up to the task in the same way as a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt. You think that he will surely calm the masses and abandon the divisive and mean-spirited demagoguery that won him the election but only got about a fourth of eligible American voters to support his candidacy. Then you realize that it is much more likely that he is trying to estimate the size of the crowd sprawled in the mall and to come up with excuses for why it is so much smaller than either of the Obama inaugural gatherings. Then you remember he doesn't need excuses because he will just lie about the size of the crowd. In fact, later in the day someone on Trump's staff tweeted that the crowd was actually much larger than it appeared because, after all, you have to include those thousands of people who were not there at all because they were afraid of the anti-Trump protestors. At any rate, as I stared at him, I hoped desperately that he would rise to the occasion and speak of unity and American values and an optimistic view of the future.

In my wildest imagination, I never anticipated what he actually did say or how discouraging it would be. Once again, I just completely underestimated Donald Trump. I think it is fair to say that the theme of his speech could be summarized by his own description of the state of our nation -- "American carnage ... shuttered factories like tombstones ... drugs and crime ..." I kept expecting the clouds to darken even more into a Gotham-like scene and for Batman to arrive to save us all from the gloom and doom. Trump described our country in the bleakest and darkest of terms and essentially turned and blamed it all on the four former Presidents sitting on the platform -- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and, of course, Barack Obama. Then, on a slight twist to his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, rather than "I and I alone can fix these problems", it was "all of these things stop effective today". In case there was any doubt in anyone's mind how that would happen or who would be responsible for it, later in the evening Trump actually claimed that he had a direct line to God and that he could and did direct him to make the rains stop each time Trump stepped outside during Inaugural Day.

Overall, it was the lowest and most disappointing and frightening moment of a day full of low, disappointing, and frightening moments -- at least up to that point.

Just before the Obamas departed (or escaped) on the helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base, Trump escorted them from the steps of the Capitol to the aircraft. He had his hands all over Barack during the walk like they were life-long buddies and gave Michelle a big kiss on each cheek just before she boarded. Remember that it was only October when Michelle gave that incredible speech in which she referred to Trump as a sexual predator of women. I can only imagine what the first words might have been in Barack and Michelle's conversation when the doors closed and the helicopter lifted off for the flight.

Now the word "Elect" had been removed from President-Elect Trump's title, the Obamas had flown into history, and Trump was left to begin his Presidency. His first duty was to address a Capitol luncheon of the elected officials, dignitaries and other VIP's who had attended the inaugural ceremony. During that speech, he called Bill and Hillary Clinton out by name, implored them to stand, and then humiliated them both by telling the crowd that it was only appropriate that the Clintons had attended the inauguration and that he, Donald Trump, had the greatest respect for the two of them. Remember, prior to the second debate, when Trump held a news conference with most of the women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Bill Clinton and including one who claimed that Clinton had raped her when she was a young girl. Remember also that Trump had joyously and repeatedly accused Hillary of being a criminal and was elated when his supporters took up the rally cry of "Lock her up!" Why do I think Trump's claim that he has the "greatest respect" for the two of them is the height of hypocrisy and insincerity and that every single man and woman in that room thought the same?

But the newly inaugurated President Trump was only just beginning. Keep in mind that he had said he was going to achieve many accomplishments on his very first day in office and then back-tracked a little when he said that first day really would not be on Friday or Saturday or even Sunday but would be postponed until his fourth day in office on Monday. But, he either lied about that or his minions were hard at work doing his bidding in his stead. By the time Trump was humiliating the Clintons (more likely just at the moment his fingers slipped off the Lincoln bible and the oath of office was still wafting in the air), the Obama White House website was pulled down and replaced with a gilded Trump version complete with an America First energy policy replacing any reference to climate change or America's leadership role in the Paris accords. And, wait for this, a lovely biography of the new First Lady including a reference to her numerous magazine covers as a model (except, of course, for the one for which she posed in the nude) and a promotion of her line of discount watches and jewelry which were hawked on QVC (until DJT ran for President and everyone discovered that Melania's jewelry was all made in China).

Of course, although the new website erased all reference to the Affordable Care Act, that was not nearly enough devastation for Day 1. While Trump was changing into his tuxedo for a round of dancing and speechifying at inaugural balls, he did find time to drop by the Oval Office and sign an executive order directing all federal agencies in the executive branch to do everything within their power to ease the burdens imposed by that disaster known to Trump as Obamacare. I swear I remember DJT repeating over and over again at his campaign rallies something like that his first executive order would be to reverse and eliminate all of President Obama's executive orders because Presidents should not and cannot act unilaterally in that fashion. Well, power corrupts and, I guess in Trump's case, it does so very quickly. So forget waiting on McConnell and Ryan and the rest of Congress to come up with a "simultaneous repeal and replace" (who said that; oh, never mind, it was Trump earlier in the week). DJT decided he would do it the old-fashioned authoritarian way and just wipe out the ACA with a stroke of a pen and destroy the lives of more than 20 million Americans (most of whom probably voted for him) before going out to party. After all, he did say he did not want to mix up signing things and celebrating.

You would think all of the above would be enough for less than ten hours on the first day (and those are only the things we actually know about). But, not so fast ... Remember earlier in the day when I was imagining that Trump might be counting heads in the crowd and plotting how to rationalize that there were nowhere near as many folks as attended Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration ceremony in temperatures in the high teens and low twenties. Well, that is exactly what he must have been obsessing about and the unfavorable comparison in popularity (i.e., lower ratings) was for him the straw that broke the camel's back and brought out the kind of petulant behavior we have all come to expect from Trump and his penchant for vindictiveness.  The difference though is that his childish reactions can now be delivered wrapped in Presidential power. Trump's obsession with the paltry size of the day's crowds began to play itself out in various ways while DJT and the First Lady were going from ball to ball and dancing to various arrangements of Frank Sinatra's My Way (which begins, in case you have forgotten, with "And now, the end is near ..." -- a musical choice almost as bizarre as Trump and Melania coming down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the previous night's concert accompanied by the Rolling Stones' Heart of Stone).

First, Trump's brand new @POTUS Twitter account was launched with a profile photograph featuring the new President's face superimposed over a banner photo of -- (drum roll, please) -- the 2009 Barack Obama crowd on the mall. Amazingly, someone noticed, found the original photo, and posted it on Twitter within a few minutes, and someone on the new White House staff pulled the banner photo (probably as their last act before being fired from one of the shortest White House careers on record). It took that person's replacement two more tries before they settled on a silhouette photo of Trump peering out the window of the Oval Office (probably wondering why but pleased by the fact that the view was not as huge as the views from his Trump Tower office or penthouse in New York). From the expression on his face, maybe he was already thinking about moving the White House to the Big Apple into a building with his name emblazoned in gold across the front.

While that fiasco was rolling out, Twitter subscribers were busy posting side-by-side photos of the mall crowds from the 2009 and 2017 inaugural ceremonies. Fortunately, in 2017, the National Park Service covered the grassy areas with white tarps in anticipation of rain, and it was easy to see where people were and were not on the mall. All I can say is that my wife and I were there in 2009 and the crowd of almost two million Americans stretched shoulder-to-shoulder from the Capitol steps to beyond the Washington Monument (almost two miles). Fortunately, there were Jumbo-Trons all along the way. At yesterday's event, the crowd thinned out pretty dramatically once you got beyond the Capitol Reflecting Pool.  Here, see 2009 for yourself --

In 2009, people were crowded elbow-to-elbow to a distance well beyond the Washington Monument

And, by the way, the difference between the size of the crowds at the Lincoln Memorial concert the night before were even more dramatic -- maybe a function both of the quality of the entertainment (Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renée Fleming, Caleb Green, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Heather Headley, Bettye Lavette, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Jennifer Nettles, Pete Seeger, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, U2, Usher, will.i.am and Stevie Wonder vs. Three Doors Down, Lee Greenwood, DJ Ravidrums, The Piano Guys, and Toby Keith) and the popularity of the person to be inaugurated. In 2009, we arrived at the concert site more than six hours before it began and could not get any closer to the stage than this --

In 2009, arriving six hours early got us a spot about a quarter-mile from the concert stage. Thank goodness for Jumbo-Trons.

I don't know how many people were there (the estimates were more than 400,000) but the crowd was standing room only (thank goodness because the density of the crowd was the only thing that kept us warm) and stretched from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial along both sides of the Reflecting Pool past the World War II Memorial and almost to the base of the Washington Monument.

Photo by By Matt G. Borowick - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattborowick/3207635903/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5753976

Believe it or not, Trump had the gall, during his remarks to the sparce crowd, to crow about how many people were present and to wonder aloud whether anyone had ever thought to have a concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the evening before the inauguration. Everyone who believes DJT did not know about the 2009 event of superstars, raise your hand. That's what I thought. By the way, at the Trump concert, virtually everyone had a chair to sit in and the audience barely extended beyond the leading edge of the Reflecting Pool. Published estimates put the number in attendance at somewhere around 10,000 -- hardly comparable to 400,000 or more and we all know that nothing irks DJT more than being a loser (especially in the ratings and popularity polls).

Meanwhile, back at the Trump White House, someone realized that the National Park Service, in response to inquiries regarding estimates of the crowd size, had perhaps unwisely re-tweeted one or more of the side-by-side aerial photos. Within an hour or two, the entire National Park Service had been silenced by an order from on high totally banning the use of Twitter accounts by all employees of the agency (and, a few minutes later, the written order had already been leaked to the press). Although we will probably never know who the sender of that re-tweet was, my guess is he or she is no longer an employee of the National Park Service or, at least, is today working in Alaska rather than the Capitol Mall.

I don't know whether that blatant exercise of executive power to censor an entire group of Federal employees was the low point of Day 1, but it certainly qualifies as a fitting crowning blow for the day as it occurred at about the same time that newly-inaugurated President Trump was waltzing to the lyrics of My Way.  No matter what else you might think of our new President, you can't help but be awed by the extreme irony of his last accomplishment for Day 1 of his Presidency -- excoriating a group of his new servants for, of all things, sending out a tweet without thinking first about the impact or consequences. Unless, of course, he claims the entire episode is "fake news" from the dishonest media. Come on, man.