Monday, January 20, inauguration day, Washington D.C. was bone-chillingly cold. Weather forecasts had called for temperatures to fall below freezing with formidable winds, making for the coldest inaugural ceremony in over 40 years.
Out of concern for public safety, all outdoor events were preemptively cancelled, with no provision for alternative arrangements. That decision would be too late for many of the potentially hundreds of thousands of spectators who had planned to attend the weekend multi-spectacular: the Trump victory rally, the inauguration itself, and the traditional presidential parade. Hotel vacancies were non-existent, and the city was overwhelmed with hot-blooded blue collar workers, politically savvy grannies, men, women, and children alike, all wearing their iconic red “Make America Great Again” hats. It was a MAGA invasion, not to be confused with any notions of a reenacted “insurrection.” America – by way of the popular vote – had decreed that this ever-growing political movement was once again to take control of Washington.
Last Friday, prospective attendees, myself among them, were greeted at the Washington Convention Center with the disheartening news that no tickets would be given out as all the public events were cancelled. Plans were in the works to move those events to the Capitol One Arena, but nothing could be verified yet on such short notice. I checked into my hotel with my mother, Sandra Lytle, who served as a delegate at the 2024 RNC convention. Next, I set out on a mission to find Jewish attendees to the scheduled slate of events. Would this be a daunting task? On the contrary, before the end of the day I started to feel as though everyone I met was Jewish, and I was overwhelmed with the amount of interaction I had. How could it be this easy?
The taxi ride to the convention center was familiar, as I had been in D.C. many times before. The large rotunda of the Capitol building could be seen from every direction, and the stunted height of the corporate buildings downtown reminded me I was no longer in Brooklyn. D.C. taxis are most often panted red, though still identify as yellow cabs. My driver stared back at me through the rear view mirror. I acknowledged his eyes. He was of African descent, and my first guess was that he was Muslim. Wrong. A thick, white ornamented cross on a string was hanging from his rearview mirror, swinging with fervor. Christian? Not so fast.
“You’re Jewish,” he said to me, noticing my yarmulke sticking out under my winter hat and maybe my tzitzis which flowed proudly from my jacket. Turns out my driver had immigrated from Ethiopia. He was a member of the Falash-Mura community, descendants of an original Jewish Diaspora sect that had settled in Ethiopia, but who, through proximity or force, converted to Christianity. Many of those who kept their Jewish identity became part of the Israeli Operation Moses or Operation Solomon, projects that extracted many of those still adhering to Jewish observance and brought them to their new home in Israel. We talked of everything, from Judaism to his fervent love of Trump. He confirmed that the “woke” movement was a worldwide phenomenon that had become prevalent in Ethiopia, but like in America, it was facing a trend of public rejection. It seems even Ethiopia is shifting politically to the right.
Before the day was over, Trump enthusiasts from the Muslim community were well represented as well by my cab driver Mohamed, who sported his own MAGA hat. Such diversity was proof that MAGA, a traditional white-American conservative movement, was expanding beyond race, religion, and borders.
By the end of the day, I had also met Jews attending Trump events from places outside of the U.S., such as Israel and Canada. One Jewish couple was attending the inauguration as part of their honeymoon. “We just got married,” Kamaya Cohen told The Jewish Press. Kamaya grew up in Israel, but now lives with her husband, Lance, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Another Jewish couple I met had traveled to the rally from London.
It was announced that the Trump rally would take place on Sunday, January 19 at 3 p.m. at the Capitol One Arena downtown. With only 20,000 seats, it would be first-come, first-served. By 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, the line to get in was several blocks long. By noon, the line had been estimated by local media outlets to exceed a mile. Still, the weather showed little mercy. As the cold front set in, those in line endured winds, then hail, followed by rain and finally snow. Interestingly, none of these ill-timed natural phenomena caused the mood to dampen – only one phenomenon could receive such merit: “He’s cutting! He’s a cutter!”
The invaders, a couple of defiant youngsters, had jumped the barricades and had attempted through bravado and intimidation to secure a spot in the line. They would be rejected. Line-holders grasped hands, creating a chain-link, and booed and heckled, not letting the two get positioning. One of the invaders, a young male, defiantly challenged a person in line to a fight, fist clasped tight. The female invader, determining it a lost cause, soothed him into a less threatening demeanor. They jumped back over the barricade and went on their way. The crowd cheered.
I met Dovid while in line; his white yarmulke and flowing tzitztis made it easy. He spoke of why today was so special for him. “We’re witnessing history right now, mamesh, this is history,” he told The Jewish Press. “[Trump] is the reason we just had our hostages released, Baruch Hashem, and I’m hopeful we’ll be able to get all the hostages released as well.” Dovid was referring to the Israeli and American hostages currently being held by Hamas, and the agreement and pending release of 33 hostages widely seen as one of Trump’s first accomplishments in his return to office.
As we neared the security checkpoint, Dovid saw others in his entourage camped outside the line. A table with a familiar surrounding of black hats – Jews of Lubavitch persuasion – on a mission concerning tefillin. It was warming to see something that excited Dovid even more than seeing Trump.
Trump stepped out onto the stage and met the cheers of… family. Not Don, Jr., Eric, or Ivanka, but a family that had grown over time, throughout the years, and loved and knew him well. It wasn’t a union of a superstar and his fans for the first time. It was a gathering of a father with his kids. The anxiety of all the chaos and crazy weather was a thing of the past. A calmness and familiarity settled over the entire arena, easily felt by even a rally first-timer like me.
“You’re going to see something tomorrow. You’re going to see executive orders that are going to make you extremely happy. Lots of them, lots of them. We have to set our country on a proper course. By the time the sun sets tomorrow evening, the invasion of our borders will have come to a halt and all the illegal border trespassers will, in some form or another, be on their way back home,” Trump told the crowd. “You’re going to have a lot of fun watching television tomorrow.”
A very emotional moment for me and others whom I encountered was when he announced that on Monday, “I will be returning to the White House” – and then corrected himself and said, “Actually we will be returning to the White House.”
Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 47th president just before noon on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Monday, January 20. He also held the dubious distinction as the first convicted felon to be elected as president. The inaugural ceremony was held inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda and was attended by Presidents Bush, Obama, and of course, Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, and all the members of Congress. It was indeed a peaceful and optimistic transition. Downstairs from the rotunda, a smaller, more intimate rally for key supporters met Trump, who spoke graciously – and humorously – with the attendees. In the front row sat wheelchair-bound Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whom Trump praised for his efforts in securing the border.
The parade took place as well after the inauguration – set indoors once again at the Capitol One Arena. Afterwards, Trump graciously hosted another unplanned rally for the thousands in attendance. By that night, he was busy signing executive orders, which included declaring an emergency on the border, effectively closing it immediately. He also signed orders rescinding 79 of Biden’s executive orders.
The work of making America great again had begun.
