WASHINGTON: There is no precedent for the rancor and bitterness that is characterizing Donald Trump's formal entry to White House as President, not even when many Democrats thought George Bush "stole" the election in 2000.
Millions of women rallied in the US capital and 400 plus other venues across the country, marches for female rights, immigration reform, and racial equality quickly devolving into an anti-Trump protest movement that was reported vigorously across the media.
The new president and his aides and supporters, barely over their own more modest Inauguration celebration, lashed out at the media for underplaying the success of their event. Claims and counterclaims flew from both sides, amid which there was a jaw-dropping spectacle of the new President entering the verbal brawl with petulance and churlishness that has become his trademark.
In his first official event as President, Trump (accompanied by vice-president Mie Pence) chose to go the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia just outside Washington DC, in an evident effort to kiss and make up with the intelligence community he had dissed more than once for their conclusion that Russia manipulated the US elections.
There, in a rambling address in front of a wall of a CIA memorial wall that commemorates personnel who died in line of duty with a single star, Trump blamed the media for the misunderstanding, and spent much time and effort berating the press and boasting of his impeccable sense of judgement, while claiming "there is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump."
Among other things, Trump had suggested in the days ahead of his swearing in that the US intelligence community had adopted Nazi tactics to undermine him and accused the exiting CIA chief of being the leaker of fake news.
"I always call them the dishonest media, but they treated me nicely (on the Inauguration speech)," Trump began in an ad hominem attack that seemed ill-suited the occasion or his priorities as the new President. Then, after a stream of consciousness digressions, he returned to the theme, complaining about how the media had reported that there were only 250,000 at his inauguration, even though by his own estimate there were "a million, million and a half people," and warning ominously, "I think they're going to pay a big price."
Trump also picked on the media for misreporting that he had a bust of Martin Luther King removed from the Oval Office. A pool report did mention the bust had been removed but later sent out a correction saying the error was caused by the reporter not being able to spot it in a crowded room.
The new President also chose the occasion to explain that he had a bust of Winston Churchill reinstated in the Oval Office because he liked Churchill. Seen as an arch imperialist, racist, and Indophobe by many Indians, Churchill had been evicted from the Oval Office in 2009 by President Obama, who replaced it with busts of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
Meanwhile, Trump's aides also picked on the press at the White House while challenging media estimates of the crowds at the inauguration ("as if it is the most important issue facing the new President" one anchor muttered audibly on air at the end of a TV report). The new dispensation seemed peeved about not just comparisons to Obama's inauguration (which all available evidence shows was way bigger), but also rattled by the size of the women's rally, which was so large that they had no place to march to.
Among those who addressed the rally was entertainment diva Madonna, who was so angry that in profanity-laced remarks she confessed she had "thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House" - a sure sign that both sides were starting to lose it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment