Traveling to Washington, DC, this week was vital to my new position as Ami’s new senior White House correspondent. The city, which is in middle of a big turnaround, seemed unusually quiet for the week of a presidential inauguration. However, as someone who is new here, I’m starting to learn that Washington isn’t fazed by large events, and as a general rule it remains pretty quiet even when big things are happening. Of course, there were some hiccups like road closures and a lack of hotel rooms for the days surrounding the inauguration, but thanks to lots of advance planning, we managed to make the trip work.
I’ve always found it interesting that there are many similarities between President Donald Trump and President Ronald Reagan. Both Reagan and Trump were in show business before using their popularity to build political careers, both changed their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican before becoming president, and both used the slogan “Make America Great Again.” In 2016, when then-candidate Trump was asked who was the last president he admired, he responded by saying Ronald Reagan.
Interestingly enough, much like Reagan, Trump’s second inauguration was moved indoors due the frigid temperatures. That was probably necessary, but it was also very disappointing to the many tens of thousands of people who had tickets to the inauguration, myself included.
Another thing the two presidents have in common is the release of hostages immediately before their inaugurations. In Reagan’s case, it was the release of the 52 American hostages who had been held by radical Islamist revolutionaries in Iran for 444 days, while in Trump’s case it was three Israeli women who were released by the Hamas terrorists in Gaza after 471 days.
Both represented a new era of strength for America, and the understanding of our adversaries that we will no longer tolerate being taken advantage of.
Although changing the plans for Trump’s inauguration may have been necessary due to the weather, and don’t get me wrong, it was very cold on the streets of DC, there is also speculation that the real reason that it was moved was due to the security risk. There was lots of concern about drone attacks and other unconventional methods of terrorism. This was obviously a huge headache for the Secret Service and the many other agencies tasked with keeping the event safe and sound. Moving the event indoors meant that most of the headaches were avoided, but the frustration on the part of Trump supporters was unavoidable. People from all over the country had made arrangements to attend the inauguration. Much of the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent on travel and the thousands of hours of work by the congressional and senate staffers who made the seating arrangements were for naught.
Like most of the credentialed press who expected to attend the inauguration, our team of reporters, photographers and videographers were informed that our tickets were no longer valid due to the change of plans. Thankfully, we managed to obtain tickets to the Capital One Arena watch party. We were in line at 8:00 a.m. when the doors opened, but we had to wait in line for almost five hours in the freezing cold.
Although we felt like our toes were falling off from the cold, the crowd was very excited and amped up. Almost everyone was wearing MAGA hats and/or other Trump paraphernalia. When people waiting in line realized that they would not be inside the arena by the time the inauguration began, they started watching the proceedings on their handheld devices as the line proceeded slowly. A few people standing around me craned their necks as we watched JD Vance and Donald Trump take their oaths of office from my phone. Some people were also able to watch the swearing-in ceremony on a large screen on one of the exterior walls of the stadium, albeit without audio.
One of the most fascinating things about the inauguration was the broad spectrum of people who showed up for Trump, both inside and outside the ceremony. In the streets I saw people of every ethnicity and religion, from Sikhs in turbans, to bearded Muslim clerics, to pastors and, of course, many frum Jews.
Inside the Capitol, the many communities that make up America were well represented, but there was also a new alliance of tech titans, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and of course Tesla’s Elon Musk. Also present was the CEO of TikTok USA, the controversial app that has been facing legal troubles and was temporarily shut down late last week, before being reinstated for the time being.
Noticeably absent was Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has feuded with Elon Musk in recent years. But Gates isn’t the only one who has had beef with Musk. Both Zuckerberg and Bezos have had a history of quarrelling with him, but somehow they seem to have overcome those challenges and are now uniting around Trump, who, not long ago, was public enemy number one. As I mentioned last week, this represents a broader cultural shift in the US.
Inside the arena, the energy was electric. There were thousands of people who waited on the long lines, many of them since the night before, with, as one newscaster put it, “only the clothes on their backs.” Some of Trump’s supporters had attended his victory rally the night before and had immediately gotten into line again for the next rally despite the freezing temperatures.
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