FEATURE ARTICLE

Temple Chima UbochiSaturday, January 14, 2017
[email protected]
Bonn, Germany

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FACTORS WHICH DETERMINED THE 2016 UNITED STATES' PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION'S (13) (INAUGURATION DAY SPECIAL WITH PHOTOS)

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Continued from Part 12

FBI Director as Factor:

I think this is going to be an unconventional presidency (House of Reps Speaker, Paul Ryan)

We need an investigation into the hacking, but the Democrats should not be thinking that they lost because of the Russians. The Democrats lost because of the Democrats (Michael Moore)

Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. The ceremony took place before a crowd of dignitaries at the U.S. Capitol, including former presidents and the woman Trump beat in November, Hillary Clinton. (Jan. 20) (Associated Press)


President Trump takes the oath of office. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

onald J. Trump was inaugurated on Friday, January 20, as the 45th president of the United States. The ceremony was witnessed by smaller crowd, and more protesters, than in previous inaugurations, and the Washington Post captured that when it wrote that Donald John Trump was sworn as the 45th president of the United States, taking office on a day that has featured smaller crowds and more subdued ceremony than previous inaugurations - but still ushers in a transformative shift in the country's leadership. Now, he will immediately face the first test of his presidency, and I will be looking forward to his accomplishments in the first 100 days in the White House. Trump was sworn in, according to polls, as the least popular president in four decades. During the campaign, he promised a lot, and now, we will see if he will fulfill half of them.

Another important point many Trump supporters haven't taken into consideration is the fact that he's already one of the most polarizing figures in U.S. history, and more to that, according to bustle.com, it turns out that Donald Trump has beat all of his predecessors in at least one other thing: At 70 years old, Trump is the oldest man to be elected president in U.S. history. On his inauguration date of January 20, 2017, President Trump is then about six months shy of his 71st birthday, which will take place in June. His age will officially make him the oldest president to take office in the U.S., but not by much. Former President Ronald Reagan was 69 years old when he was inaugurated in 1981 - and, on the day of his inauguration, Reagan was only about two weeks from his 70th birthday.

During his inaugural, Trump was talking as if he was still campaigning. His speech was full of bone and no beef, as he promised a lot but nothing. Why can't Trump get it that the campaign is over? When will Trump learn that there are ways to do things, and that he can't change things as he wants? When will Trump learn that running the biggest and most complex government on earth is different from controlling a business empire? Soon, the reality will set in, and he will learn that "the sound of the bitter kola (in the mouth) is not like its taste". Soon, Trump will discover that his historic unpopularity and lack of discipline, if to borrow the words from NYT, will cut him down to size.

Just like during the campaign, Trump pandered to fear, prejudice and xenophobia, during his inauguration speech. He said so many "good things", but their implementation will be another thing, as words come easier than action. Soon, he will learn the hard way.

Unfortunately, Trump still thinks that bluntness, that won the election for him, will continue to serve him well; but from now on, he will notice that it will only create more problems for him. Addressing the gathering, during his inauguration ceremony, Trump accused the political class and his predecessors, sitting just behind him, of having cheated the people. He created a picture of "all the other guys are bad and only Trump is good", but soon, the political establishment will come fighting back. Only God knows where it will all end.

One thing that puzzles me is how Trump won the election decisively, but remains so unpopular that he's the least popular president, in at least 40 years, to have taken the oath of office. Few days to his inauguration, the Washington Post noted that a national poll has it that just 40 percent of Americans say they have a favorable impression of Trump, and that's 21 points lower than President Barack Obama's departing favorability rating of 61 percent, and easily the lowest popularity for an incoming president since 1977. It means that Trump trails behind former Presidents Obama (79 percent), Bill Clinton (68 percent), George H.W. Bush (65 percent), Ronald Reagan (58 percent) and Jimmy Carter (78 percent). The Paper wrote that even former President George W. Bush - who entered office after a bitter recount fight with Al Gore - was still more popular than Trump at inauguration time, with a 62 percent favorability rating.

To show that Trump is unpopular, let's compare the Trump-Obama inauguration crowds.


(When comparing the size of Trump and Obama's inauguration crowds, there's a clear difference. USA TODAY NETWORK)

As a sign of the deep divisions Trump sowed during his combative campaign, dozens of Democratic lawmakers boycotted the swearing-in ceremony on Capitol Hill.


(Photo: Carolyn Kaster, AP)

The USA Today wrote that one of the most politically charged topics of any Inauguration Day is invariably: crowd size. Officials had suggested in advance of Donald Trump's inauguration that around 900,000 people would descend upon Washington, D.C., for the inauguration and the parade, fewer by about half that attended the historic inauguration of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, in 2009. But Trump himself said he was hoping for a "record-setting turnout." Overhead photos, shortly before Trump's swearing-in, showed a lot of people but also a lot of empty spaces on the National Mall.


Trump embraces family members after taking the oath of office

On how Trump handled his presidential transition, many Americans weren't amused, as just only 40 percent of Americans polled say they approve of the way Trump has handled the presidential transition; and that's half as many as the roughly 80 percent who approved of the way Obama, Clinton and George H.W. Bush handled their transitions.

There's a paradox here, and we need an explanation: How did Trump win the election, and still, on the eve of his inauguration, according to The Washington Post, 52 percent of Americans see Trump as unqualified to be president, compared with 44 percent who say he is qualified. (That's no vote of confidence, but it's actually the lowest number of people saying he's unqualified since he became a candidate.) True to form, Trump isn't buying any of it: on Tuesday, January 17, he took to twitter to attack the low opinion polling as "rigged."

During his inauguration on Friday, November 20, many celebrities, politicians, especially the Democrats, and many others boycotted the ceremony, as a protest against Trump's presidency. The worst is that many more people demonstrated in Washington D.C., during the inauguration, than those who attended the inauguration ceremony. Few days to the inauguration, a new poll results, according to NBC News, said that hundreds of thousands of people are preparing to hit the streets of Washington, D.C., to protest the president-elect during his inaugural week, and even the Women's March on Washington, still taking place since Saturday, the day after Trump's inauguration, is probably the largest protest, with hundreds of thousands participating in the nation's capitol. Corresponding protests are holding across the United States. To understand it all, the Department of Homeland Security was estimating an overall attendance of about 800,000 to 900,000 people, including protesters, for Trump's inauguration. But despite Trump's claim of a "record" turnout, that estimate is significantly less than the 1.8 million attendees at Obama's inauguration in 2009.

While Donald Trump was sworn in as the president of the United states, rage and destruction also marked his inaugural festivities, as the Associated Press, on January 21, 2017, wrote that Protesters set fires and hurled bricks in a daylong assault on the city hosting Donald Trump's inauguration, registering their rage against the new president in a series of clashes that led to more than 200 arrests. Police used pepper spray and stun grenades to prevent the chaos from spilling into Trump's formal procession and evening balls. According to a spokesman for the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department, the demonstrations included acts of vandalism and clashes with police officers.

And to show that it's an interconnected world, there were protests worldwide against the inauguration of Donald Trump. The Friday's protests spread across nations and as far abroad as Australia. In Sydney, thousands rallied in the city's central Hyde Park. One organizer said hatred, bigotry and racism are not only America's problems. A banner reading "Build bridges not walls" was draped across London's Tower Bridge on Friday as part of a series of protests across the world aimed at expressing displeasure at the inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. president. Several hundred people, most of them expatriate Americans, held a protest on Friday in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, hours before his inauguration in Washington. Some people held up electric candles and others carried placards reading "Love Trumps Hate" and "Women's Rights Are Human Rights," as they marched along a downtown street. In the Philippines, earlier on Friday, about 200 demonstrators from a Philippine nationalist group rallied for about an hour against Trump outside the U.S. embassy in Manila. Some held up signs demanding U.S. troops to leave the Philippines, while others set fire to a paper U.S. flag bearing a picture of Trump's face. Trump's presidency is being viewed with caution in some parts of Asia. (Reuters).

Here in Germany, there were protests, against the swearing in of Donald Trump, in Berlin and other major cities, and in my own Bonn, the protest was still going on, Saturday, January 21, in the "Frieden Platz (Peace Place)" as I was writing this part of the article.

To be continued!

TIT BITS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_nUtmzhNQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7I_9MMcWvk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJVn0hpBVuE

THE THANX IS ALL YOURS!!!

Continued from Part 12

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IMAGES IN THE NEWS