But actually, when it rolled around, inauguration day felt surprisingly flat. Clear sunlight had been displaced by mist and drizzle; it was cold and miserable, and the city was suddenly full of anxious protesters and delighted Trump fans trudging around, side by side. Every now and then, a ludicrously impotent altercation would break out (I saw one group of protesters arguing with a white nationalist over who opposes socialism the most), but these would eventually dissolve and both sides go their separate ways. Sometimes, protesters would heckle queues of Trump fans waiting to get into the inauguration secure zone but these acts would mostly result in dismissive grumbles from the gathered crowds; words to the effect that people would not be protesting if they pulled themselves together and got a job. In fact, I spent much of inauguration day queuing with Trump supporters. Although the media reported poor attendance, it still took hours to get to the National Mall, where the action was taking place. After spending two or three hours waiting, I eventually gave up and committed the most un-British crime of all – I jumped the queue. This sparked muted outrage from the people around me, although that, too, fizzled out quickly. I couldn’t help but develop a fondness for the Trump supporters corralled in these pens with me. They were universally friendly, often fascinated by my British accent and – once I said I was there in my capacity as a journalist – desperate for me to get the message to the British people that the media lies about Trump all the time. I met a biker gang from North Carolina who took an instant shine to me. “Trump’s a businessman,” they said. “He’s not political. He had all that wealth and he put it aside to serve his country.” This was a common theme among the Trump fans I spoke to: Trump was good at business and uninterested in politics – exactly the right qualities to get the country back on track. For me, it was like listening to visitors from another planet. To hear dozens of people ascribe any kind of virtue to his actions was completely surreal. Most people I spoke to were straightforwardly right-wing; one 15-year-old girl told me, “I come from the most conservative town in America and socialism kills people”. Others had more complex opinions, such as support for free healthcare, or hatred of the Republican party, which made me wonder whether, had the Democrats run a different campaign, would these people be sharing a queue with me to watch Donald Trump become president? When Trump was sworn in, cheers rippled through the crowd, but in the middle of a vast group of people it was hard to tell what was really going on. “Oh, he’s been inaugurated,” observed one man in a Make America Great Again hat, with a notable air of detachment. Anonymous in the audience, you didn’t feel like you were there to witness the spectacle for yourself but rather as an extra in a show staged for the benefit of the assembled news networks. In this respect, the absurd grandiosity of the occasion was more suited to the likes of Trump than Obama. The whole event seemed geared towards making good TV – and no one knows more about that than Donald Trump.