WASHINGTON – Standing on a street corner after watching Donald Trump’s inaugural address, Daniel Hall, of Beckley, West Virginia, said he was heartened that the new president talked about those people forgotten during the Obama years.

Hall, who wore an NRA cap, said the past eight years “have been tough” for gun owners.

Walking off the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, where Trump spoke after taking the oath of office, MaKray Kyer, a sophomore at Dalton State College in Georgia, said what made Trump’s speech the “most amazing thing” he’d ever heard was his mention of God.

A day earlier, Kyer had spoken about being mocked on campus for wearing a Trump ball cap.

With Trump in office, he said, “conservatives can be bold” in pushing what they want including stronger borders and a repeal of the abortion rights assured by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade opinion.

Tony Samuel, who had been a press contact for Trump’s primary campaign in Indiana, said the new president showed in his address that he’ll be a “man of action” who will bring back jobs and take on radical Islam.

But by saying that he’ll emphasize those who’ve been forgotten, Trump’s was a “message of unity,” Samuel said.

Emotions were decidedly mixed as Trump took the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to become the country’s 45th president. While supporters hailed his inauguration, clashes between police and protesters broke out throughout the city, some of them turning violent.

But Trump took his oath, six people seated near the front of the crowd stood with T-shirts that spelled “R-E-S-I-S-T.” They loudly recited the oath of office, eliciting boos from the crowd.

Trump takes on leadership of a nation deeply divided by his policies and character. Just hours before he took the oath, U.S. Capitol Police and protesters clashed at a gate for spectators going to the swearing-in ceremony.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon, police arrested nearly 100 people in several clashes. In some instances, police reportedly used stun grenades and tear gas to quell angry crowds, some of which broke windows and damaged other property.

In the morning confrontation, dozens of people protesting a variety of causes including Palestinian rights and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay locked arms, struggling with Trump supporters shoving their way through to the inauguration.

Police in regular uniform pushed the protesters away in a scene that resembled a rugby scrum.

When the protesters returned a short time later, again with the U.S. Capitol in the backdrop, police in black riot gear pushed them away. At least one protester fell to the ground in the second scrum.

Trump supporters were slowly able to make their way around a line of police, as protesters continued chanting, “No justice, no peace.”

Later in the afternoon, as the city’s attention turned to the inaugural parade, police chased a group of about 100 protesters who smashed windows of a Starbucks, Bank of America and McDonald’s in northwest Washington, about a mike from the national mall.

The mob of protesters reportedly grew to 1,000 people, some of whom wore gas masks and lobbed rocks at police. The blast of stun grenades reverberated as police dispersed the group.

Time of change

Long before the confrontations began, in the pre-dawn hours, dozens of Trump supporters streamed in the darkness onto the Capitol grounds, where Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, of Indiana, were to take their oaths of office.

Among them was Bobby Walker, 18, of Cooperstown, N.Y., who said Trump’s inauguration is the beginning of “change.”

That is a change from the “establishment politics” in Washington, D.C., he said, to a time of things getting done outside the influence of high-powered lobbyists.

Trump pressured Lockheed Martin Corp. to lower the price of the F-35 fighter just using Twitter, said Walker, who wore a button, “Donald Trump: I was there.”

Maamon Spry, of Logan, West Virginia, said later he also saw change reflected in Trump’s speech.

Trump, he said, “spoke from the heart. He didn’t look like he was reading a script.” Spry was walking among hundreds of people leaving the Capitol grounds after noon, in a crowd so large that it brought some streets to a standstill.

Earlier in the morning, Dwayne “Doc” Collins, an East Texas veterinarian wearing a black cowboy hat, was headed to the inauguration and looking forward to a ceremony that marked the beginning of a “groundswell to make America great again.”

Collins pushed his wheelchair through a separate gate than the one that saw the protests. A member of the local Tea Party in Edom, Texas, he said he looks forward to Trump creating new jobs, lowering taxes and attacking “a bureaucracy that’s gotten too large.”

But two polls this week – one by CNN and ORC International, the other by ABC News and The Washington Post – show fewer than half of Americans hold a favorable opinion of the new president.

Trump’s 40 percent favorable rating in the ABC News/Post poll, according to the newspaper, is the lowest of any president in the past 40 years.

In a scene illustrating a divided nation, Sandra De Alcuaz stood among protesters, some of whom wore orange jumpsuits with black hoods to symbolize Guantanamo prisoners, near the Capitol on Friday morning.

She held a sign, “There is a man under the hood.”

Nearby a man holding a sign commanding “Repent” was engaged in a battle of bullhorns, face to face with another protester.

The man yelled through his bullhorn, “Jesus is coming to kill his enemies.”

The woman yelled through hers, “We want justice.”

De Alcuaz also said Trump’s inauguration is a beginning.

“What I fear is we will fall back in terms of environmental protection and basic freedoms,” she said. “It’s the first time in my life – and I’m in my 60s – when I’m fearful for my country.”

Deeper meanings

For many of those supporting Trump, the day marks a deeper change than building a wall along the border with Mexico or repealing the Affordable Care Act – pillars of his campaign.

“Barack Obama’s agenda was so socialistic, so anti-Christian,” said Dianne Putnam, of Dalton, Georgia, one of 73 people who rode on a six-bus caravan from the Atlanta area to Washington.

“This is not the America our founding fathers died for,” she said.

Danny Hamilton, who organized the caravan from Atlanta aboard his Star Coaches buses, the kind used by entertainers, said he imagines “going back to the kind of America I grew up with.”

Hamilton, who considers himself an independent, said he voted for Obama in 2008, believing he the first African American president would be bring the races together.

He quickly soured on Obama, when the Affordable Care Act sent the premiums he pays for his employees’ health insurance skyrocketing and he saw the country moving in the wrong direction along myriad paths.

Hamilton, who grew up not locking his door in Tifton, Georgia, said the country is now inundated with drugs. Trump may not totally restore the feeling of safety he remembers from his youth, he said, but tightening the borders will help.

Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Indiana, in an interview Thursday, said he also looks forward to change, specifically being involved in Trump’s promise to build infrastructure and repeal the Affordable Care Act

“Finally, after six years, I’m going to have partners to work with,” said Rokita, a member of the House budget committee.

Rokita pronounced Trump’s taking office “the beginning of a different direction.”

“The problem with the old direction was that it was very divisive and significantly socialistic,” he said. “America is at a point where we may have some question marks, but we know where we were going was not working.”

He discounted the polls showing Trump’s sagging popularity.

“Polls, schmolls,” he said.

He also blasted members of Congress who were boycotting the inauguration.

Rokita said he went to Obama’s two inaugurations, “even though we couldn’t agree on the color of the sky on certain days.”

“This is about America and the Constitution, not about your petty political ideology,” he said.

Inauguration price tag

Trump’s inauguration – including three official balls – are being funded by more than $100 million raised by his inaugural committee — about twice as much as Obama raised when he took the oath of office in 2009 and 2013.

Some of Trump’s support came from large donations that gave contributors special access to Trump, Pence and congressional leaders, the Center for Public Integrity reported.

A fundraising brochure disclosed by the non-profit investigative journalism outlet showed those giving $1 million or more to the Trump inaugural received tickets to an “intimate dinner” with Pence and his wife, Karen.

They also received tickets to a “candlelight” dinner with Trump, Pence and their wives, as well as tickets to an inaugural ball Friday night.

Those giving $500,000 or more received tickets to the candlelight dinner, the ball and “an intimate policy discussion and dinner with select Cabinet appointees,” among other perks.

The inaugural committee did not respond to a request for information about its events, or the names of those who’ve donated $500,000 or more. The committee is not required to disclose its donors until 90 days after the inauguration.

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Contact him at kmurakami@cnhi.com. Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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