1.21 In cities across America and across the globe, approximately 4 million women (and some men) marched against Trump’s policies, among them Ginny, Susan, and Ann and Nadia Lindstrom.
1.21 The Washington Post: “More than 1 million people gathered in Washington and in cities around the country and the world Saturday to mount a roaring rejoinder to the inauguration of President Trump. What started as a Facebook post by a Hawaii retiree became an unprecedented international rebuke of a new president that packed cities large and small from London to Los Angeles, Paris to Park City, Utah, Miami to Melbourne, Australia. The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, who originally sought a permit for a gathering of 200,000, said Saturday that as many as half a million people participated. On Sunday, Metro officials announced that Saturday was the second-busiest day in the Washington subway system’s history, with 1,001,613 trips. (By contrast, on Trump’s Inauguration Day, the system recorded 570,557 trips.) Many in the nation’s capital and other cities said they were inspired to join because of Trump’s divisive campaign and his disparagement of women, minorities and immigrants. In signs and shouts, they mocked what they characterized as Trump’s lewd language and sexist demeanor. The marches provided a balm for those eager to immerse themselves in a like-minded sea of citizens who shared their anxiety and disappointment after Democrat Hillary Clinton’s historic bid for the presidency ended in defeat. “We just want to make sure that we’re heard,” said Mona Osuchukwu, 27, a D.C. native.”
1.21 Gregg Popovich: “The march today was great. The message is important. It could have been a whole lot of groups marching. Somebody said on TV, ‘What’s the message?’ The message is obvious. Our president comes in with the lowest rating of anybody whoever came into the office. There’s a majority of people out there, since Hillary won the popular vote, that don’t buy his act. I just wish he was more … had the ability to be mature enough to do something that really is inclusive, rather than just talking and saying, ‘I’m going to include everyone.’ He could talk to the groups that he disrespected and maligned during the primary and really make somebody believe it. But so far, you’ve gotten to the point where you really can’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth. You really can’t. All those thousands that were on the rooftops after 9/11? There were two. ‘We went to Hawaii and checked his birth certificate, and my investigators couldn’t believe what they found.’ There wasn’t anything there. It’s over and over again. The CIA today, instead of honoring the 117 people behind him where he was speaking, he talked about the size of the crowd. That’s worrisome. That’s worrisome. I’d just feel better if someone who was in that position showed the maturity and psychological and emotional level of someone that was his age. It’s dangerous, and it doesn’t do us any good. I hope he does a great job. But there’s a difference between respecting the office of the president and the person who occupies it. That respect has to be earned. It’s hard to be respectful of someone when we all have kids and we’re watching him be misogynistic and xenophobic and racist and make fun of handicapped people. And what really bothers me are the people around him, the Sean Spicers, the Kellyanne Conways, the Reince Preibuses, who know who he is and actually have the cynical approach and disingenuous attitude to really defend him and try to make it look like he didn’t say what he said. When he’s mad at the media for them reporting what he said, it just boggles my mind. When Kellyanne Conway said he wasn’t really making fun of the handicapped person, it’s incredible. It really makes you wonder how far would someone go to actually cover for somebody that much. I think the comment was ‘You had to look in his heart. You don’t know what’s in his heart. He wouldn’t do that.’ But he did it. And all the things he said during that time, if our children would have said it, we would have grounded them for six months. Without a doubt. But we ignore all that, because … because why? That says something about all of us. And that’s what’s dangerous. That’s what scares the hell out of me to this day and makes me uneasy. But I felt great today watching the march, in protest to how he has conducted himself, because it tells me I really do live in a country where a lot of people care. We have to be vigilant, to make sure that although we all hope he does good things for our country, we don’t get embarrassed by him and roll back liberties that have been worked for for so long in so many different areas.”
1.21 NewYorkPost:“President Trump’s press secretary is declaring that Trump’s inauguration had the largest audience in history “both in person and around the globe.” Sean Spicer insists, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.”
Modal TriggerBarack Obama’s 2009 inauguration (top) compared to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Spicer offers no evidence to support the claim. It is not known how many people watched the ceremony on television around the globe. In the US, Nielsen estimates 31 million viewers watched TV coverage, but that’s less than Barack Obama’s and Ronald Reagan’s first inaugurations. On the ground in Washington, crowds on Friday were noticeably smaller than those at some previous inaugurations. Spicer convened reporters at the White House during Trump’s first full day in office to accuse them of engaging in “deliberately false reporting.” He’s claiming that photographs of the inauguration were intentionally framed in a way to minimize the crowd.
Photos of the National Mall make clear that the crowd did not extend to the Washington Monument, as it did for Obama’s 2009 inauguration.
1.21 Nicolle Wallace, in response to a query from Mark Halperin about “costs of untruths from WH podium”: “Credibility they don’t value, goodwill they don’t think they need, professionalism they aren’t capable of, humility they wouldn’t recognize.”
1.20 Jim Brown, to the Wall Street Journal, on his support for Donald Trump: “We’re a country that has been snoozing. Now we are alert. Whether it’s negative or positive, energy has risen. People are engaged. They’re studying. They are thinking more. And I think that’s good. You can’t get that without someone being bold enough to say things people don’t agree with.”
1.20 George Will in the Washington Post: “Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s White House counselor, had promised that the speech would be “elegant.” This is not the adjective that came to mind as he described “American carnage.” That was a phrase the likes of which has never hitherto been spoken at an inauguration. Oblivious to the moment and the setting, the always remarkable Trump proved that something dystopian can be strangely exhilarating: In what should have been a civic liturgy serving national unity and confidence, he vindicated his severest critics by serving up reheated campaign rhetoric about “rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape” and an education system producing students “deprived of all knowledge.” Yes, all. But cheer up, because the carnage will vanish if we “follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.” “Simple” is the right word.
1.20 Donald Trump is sworn in as America’s 45th president. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
