THE AMERICAN HORROR SHOW: DONALD TRUMP BECOMES 45TH U.S. PRESIDENT
Heading for pre-Inauguration festivities, the Trump entourage left Trump Tower in New York on January 19, 2017 in a motorcade that took them to an airplane to fly down to Washington – a back and forth that would define the Trump presidency as it was expected that Trump’s wife Melania and his ten-year old son Baron would stay in New York, while Trump would wreak havoc in Washington for a few days and then fly away for long weekends in Florida, a Trump golf course, or Trump Tower to consult with his sons over business deals to get away from Washington where only 4% of the population had voted for him. Once the Trump entourage landed in Washington, they went to the Capital’s most important new destination that would be the heart of their social life and perhaps financial and political life – the Trump International Hotel. At a dinner for the superrich donors, some of whom he insulted in a “welcoming” speech for sending him big checks the day after the election, Trump gushed that the ballroom was a “fabulous” space and “a genius must have designed it.” After inspecting his Washington property, Trump crossed the Potomac for a wreath-laying with Vice President-elect Mike Pence at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Trump and Pence Inc. and their spouses and family then drove to the Lincoln Memorial for a pre-Inauguration concert. As the small crowd waited restlessly for the Great Man and his entourage to arrive, downbeat bars of the Rolling Stones “You Can’t Always Get What you Want,” (inexplicably Trump’s campaign anthem), were played over and over, finally giving way to the Stones’ “Heart of Stone” as the Great Man arrived to the mournful intonation of Mick Jagger singing “Heart of Stone, Heart of Stone,” as Trump tramped across the stage waving at the crowd, a strange lyric to define the new President-to-be. 78 year-old Jon Voight, the only actor in Hollywood that would participate in Trump’s (not)Gala, played master of ceremonies for the B and C list groups that entertained the Trumps and the crowds.
145 THE AMERICAN HORROR SHOW: DONALD TRUMP BECOMES 45TH U.S. PRESIDENT
Trump gamely tried now and then to move with the music, but his wife Melania stood as a frozen statue of beauty, while Son-in-law Jarod Kushner, who with his wife Ivanka, were rumored to be the powers behind the throne who Trump often consulted before major decisions, stood rigid and dazed as he listened to the no-doubt unfamiliar country music, the military brass bands, the crazed piano dudes, and the jarring heavy metal act, wondering what cauldron of culture and populism he was now trapped in. The network pundits themselves seemed dazed and not able to conceptualize what was happening as Trump made rambling remarks that the mike didn’t pick up too clearly. A fireworks display gave Trump a chance to escape, and the iconography of the multicolored fireworks exploding over Washington created an eerie spectacle of the Capital under attack and exploding in an apocalyptic signaling of a New Era of World History, or maybe just the End of America as we once knew it, as.” And then: “As Trump and his wife, Melania, descended the monument’s steps at sunset, the president-elect saluted the marble statue of President Abraham Lincoln, flashed a tight smile and pumped his fist in the air to the roar of the crowd and the Rolling Stones’ ‘Heart of Stone’ playing from the speakers.”165 After this fiasco of a Bad Culture Event, the Trump Gang hurried to the now-familiar space of Trump’s new Washington hotel for a pricey dinner for the super donors where he became unhinged and made a rambling speech, pointing out Republican dignitaries, donors, and other emerging pillars of the New Order, as he kept congratulating himself on what a great campaign he’d run, what a great victory it was, and what great things he’d do for the country to Make America Great again, a phrase he just couldn’t stop repeating, along with evocation of The Trump Movement: “It’s a movement like we’ve never seen anywhere in the world, they say.” Trump also gushed that “[W]e have by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled,” although many of his cabinet nominees had done poorly in initial Congressional Hearings, providing comic montage for both news and late night television that would keep a worried nation entertained and perhaps assured that this Trump Clown Show wouldn’t suddenly become the American Horror Show, as many feared.
146