Gaud and Country
In the summer of 2014, when Donald Trump was just sixty-eight years old, he appeared in a one-minute video that began with a shot of Trump Tower taken from the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 56th Street. The footage fades to the skyscraper’s roof, where Miss Universe and Miss USA pour Trump-branded water into silver ice buckets. A seated Trump bellows, “I’ve been called out by everybody: Homer Simpson, Mike Tyson, Vince McMahon, like, everybody’s going crazy over this. ” He then dares “President Obama, my son Donald, my son Eric” to take up the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, culminating his own under the urban sun.
On January 20, 2025, it is a frighteningly cold day, and everybody Trump referred to by name in that video knows him differently now. In that dark node of American capital, Midtown Manhattan, and indeed at Trump Tower, a pilgrimage of sorts took place as he was sworn in as #47. The building, guarded by a small NYPD detail, opened its doors at 10 a.m. to the roughly forty people waiting outside. There weren’t any metal detectors, and when a Wet Floor sign collapsed, the clap of plastic on stone sounded like a muffled gunshot.
False alarm. In the central atrium, I encountered no protestors making noise, only believers in their own land. I consulted an older woman about gaining access to Trump Grill for the televised inauguration at noon. “You need… to have bought… a ticket,” she drawled out, as if dosing herself morphine. A primly dressed man piped up to say that entry to the watch party cost about $385. Would members of the Trump family be there? Well, the man said, he might have seen Curtis Sliwa. A tourist couple asked me to take their picture under Trumpian signage. “It’s a special day for us. We are Brazilians, but we really like the job Trump is doing.” It was their first visit to New York.
A different man with a Bergdorf bag in hand had the same picture taken. Two adults with shopping totes from the Lego Store waltzed through the lobby. A family carried their child in a stroller. Barred from entry to Trump Grill, I made for the exit just as a MAGA cowboy with two women trailing behind him entered.
After sauntering from one pub to the next in search of a TV to watch the swearing-in ceremony, I returned to Trump Tower to find a pretty sedate scene. Fewer than fifty guests were visible from the public concourse. Suited men danced awkwardly to a pounding DnB remix of George Michael’s “Freedom!” while many more people milled about. They all seemed pleased, if perhaps wondering when the party would really start.