Limp cheers and tiny crowds: March protesting against Donald Trump falls flat
Shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration eight years ago, half a million people headed onto the streets of Washington DC to protest the new president.
Now, as Mr Trump prepares for his return to office, an attempt to repeat the event and stir up mass resistance to the Republican fell flat. One unimpressed attendee described it as “disappointingly tiny”, while another said turnout was “unfortunate”.
For an event that billed itself as the “People’s March”, not a lot of people ended up marching.
Protesters lined the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday to listen to speakers who branded Mr Trump a “Nazi”, condemned the evils of colonisation, and declared that anti-Semitism had been “weaponised”.
The location, which faces onto the Washington Monument and beyond that, the rotunda of the US Capitol where the president-elect will be inaugurated on Monday, was unquestionably busier than usual.
But compared to the Women’s March of 2017, which is estimated to have drawn three times more people than the audience for Mr Trump’s first inauguration, it was positively serene.
“It’s disappointingly tiny… the energy is very different this time,” a woman handing out a communist newspaper to the dwindling crowds told The Telegraph.
As she spoke, one of a succession of speakers who had been charged with geeing up the audience called Mr Trump a “fascist” and announced: “We will not be silent.”
She got a limp cheer from those still hanging about by the frozen waters of the reflecting pool.
About halfway into the speeches, an abortion rights sign that had been folded in half and thrown into a bin could be seen. Next to it, in a second bin, was a People’s March sign.
Even a Ben & Jerry’s tent – the liberal ice cream company sponsored the event – where treats were being handed out seemed to be struggling to boost numbers.
Renato Terramore, a street theatre performer dressed in a blue dressing gown and keffiyeh, said the crowd seemed to be about 10 times smaller than the 2017 march.
“That was amazing. It was so packed. You could not move – I stood in one place for a couple of hours, people were jammed against me,” he said. “This one’s smaller than that one.”
Mr Terramore, wearing a papier-mâché hat in the shape of a dead fish and a pair of John Lennon-style glasses, said he was in favour of deporting Mr Trump to Germany because they “have a lot of neo-Nazis”.
“His family’s from Germany originally. Deport him back there - he wants to deport immigrants, get rid of him number one,” he said.
Mr Terramore was not the only attendee who had a radical plan to stop the Republican taking the oath of office just days later.
Glynis McCorkle, a vet who said she was there to support the cause of “peace and love”, called the 78-year-old president a “bigot” and said he should be castrated.
“I am really, really worried that Donald Trump has been elected president,” she said as she left the protest early, awkwardly navigating amongst the others also heading for an exit with a pair of eight-foot wings strapped to her back.
Gary Lin, a former computer programmer waving the Stars and Stripes alongside a rainbow flag, said the event was “not as big or proud as the one eight years ago”, and suggested that Mr Trump’s re-election had not caused the same “shock to the system”.
In 2016 against Hillary Clinton, the Republican won the electoral college but lost the popular vote. Against Kamala Harris he swept both.
Mr Lin said the low turnout was “unfortunate” but that it did not mean that “hardly anybody is concerned”, adding: “I think it’s just that they’re going to do their resisting and protesting online, at home.”
Organisers had hoped to draw around 50,000 people to the protest on Saturday and have not yet released their estimates of how many appeared. Police expected the number to be closer to 25,000.
Whatever the real figure, it will likely have been boosted by several baffled Trump supporters wandering into the crowd, having arrived in town for the inauguration on Monday.
Merchants laden with anti-Trump merchandise – some of it recycled from Mr Trump’s first term in office – also wove amongst the audience, dragging a trolley of their wares behind them.
At the start of the demonstration, they were charging $15 for a T-shirt. By the end, you could pick one up for a third of the price.
“Get your ‘f— your Trump’ right here,” one man yelled, displaying a board full of badges bearing the slogan. “‘F— your Trump’, five dollars!”
In just a matter of hours, Mr Trump will take the oath of office for a second time and will move back into the White House.
By that point, his protesters will have moved on, the People’s March will be a dim memory, and the merchants will be selling Trump inauguration T-shirts instead.