Trump inauguration: Some WA residents go to celebrate. Others to listen

Bainbridge Island horse farmer Mike Jones turned up for President Donald Trump’s inauguration with his long johns and hopes to view a historic event as best he could despite its move indoors due to frigid temperatures. Sunday, Jones waited outside for hours to get into Trump’s pre-inauguration rally. Monday, he watched the president’s swearing in from a hotel bar.

It was all fine with him.

“It’s just been electric,” Jones said. He loved hearing Carrie Underwood’s a cappella rendition of “America the Beautiful,” Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell’s soaring call to let freedom ring and, most of all, Trump’s promise of “a golden age” about to begin.

Jones, one of more than 100 Washingtonians who traveled to D.C. for the inauguration, believes it. As he walked around the streets of the nation’s capitol, he saw lots of smiling people in Make America Great Again hats and paraphernalia. “We’re really a united and identifiable group of folks here in the city,” he said.

It doesn’t look that way everywhere, and certainly not in Washington state, despite Trump’s declaration Monday that “national unity is now returning to America.” With Democrats reigning supreme locally, many residents fear the second regime of a man they see as having a far right, autocratic vision.

Yet, nearly 40% of the state’s voters supported Trump in the November election — some of them wildly enthusiastic about aggressive changes the populist iconoclast has promised, including mass deportations, government downsizing and curtailment of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

For Washingtonians going to Trump’s inauguration, shelling out for jacked up airfares and hotel rooms, then facing an Arctic blast, the trip offers something locally elusive: an opportunity to celebrate a conservative victory.

Jones said he feels disenfranchised in Washington, where there is “largely one-party rule.”

Asked why he wanted to go to the inauguration, Jones said: “It’s kind of along the same lines of why I wear my Trump gear around.” When he puts on his Trump hat or rides in his truck with a Trump flag, he’s flying his political “colors,” as he puts it, sending a message that not all people on Bainbridge Island think alike.

Not all who booked tickets for the inauguration think alike either. Kennewick’s Sandi Youngquist said she and husband Larry Youngquist — strong supporters of outgoing vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — wanted to better understand Trump’s appeal by listening to him and his supporters.

“We needed to put our feelings aside to try to be a little bit more open-minded,” said Sandi Youngquist, who like her husband used to work in technology for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Both are now retired.

The inauguration marks an extraordinary chapter in American history, those wanting to see it up close agreed. As Jones pointed out, only one previous president failed to win reelection but later returned to office for a second term: Grover Cleveland.

Hossein Khorram, a major Trump fundraiser who organized a contingent of 20 Washington donors to attend the inauguration, marveled at another highly unusual aspect of the 45th and 47th president’s swearing-in. Less than a year ago, Trump was looking at possible prison time after being convicted of felonies related to falsifying business records in a sex scandal. Heinstead received a no-penalty sentencethis month.

“It’s the greatest political comeback in U.S. history,” said Khorram, a Bellevue real estate developer — a notion Trump repeated in his inauguration speech.

Tired of being called ‘deplorables’

There’s a sense of vindication among conservative Washingtonians who headed for the inauguration, a feeling they are in the majority nationwide even though a minority at home.

That majority, as some see it, is reasserting itself after being put down by cultural and intellectual elites.

“That’s part of what a lot of Americans have felt, and why they joined the Trump movement,” Jones said. “They’ve been called ‘deplorables.’ They’ve been called every name in the book. And we’re just patriotic Americans who love our country and want to see our country doing great like it used to.”

By that, the Bainbridge Island farmer means a country that is economically strong and a “force for good in the world,” reminiscent of former President Ronald Reagan’s vision of a “shining city upon a hill.”

As a University of Washington student in the 1980s, Jones was inspired by Reagan’s optimism and the California politician’s tough stance toward the former Soviet Union, which he branded an “evil empire.” Jones believes Trump shares Reagan’s commitment to “peace through strength.”

Jones also sees Trump, like Reagan, energizing disaffected young people.

As a whole, voters 18 to 29 favored Harris in November, with 52% voting for the former vice president. But Trump, whose masculine rhetoric on so-called “bro” podcasts exacerbated the gender divide, won 56% of young men.

That’s not to say Trump lacks female fans. Kerry French, a Kent GOP activist who traveled to D.C. for the inauguration, said Trump’s defiant reaction to the Sept. 15 attempt on his life amped up her support for the Republican standard-bearer.

“He got up and put his fist in the sky and he said, fight, fight, fight. That’s when I fell in love with the man,” French said.

“Sometimes, I think he trolls people,” she continued. Trump has called former Vice President Mike Pence “delusional,” categorized the press as an “enemy of the people,” and labeled Jack Smith, the former federal prosecutor who led the criminal case against Trump accusing him of improperly retaining classified documents, “deranged,” “evil and sick.”

“But what means the most to me,” French said of Trump, “is I know he loves America. He wants to put America first.”

Like Jones, French in her youth was inspired by Reagan. “He made it cool to be patriotic again,” French said, crediting him with her 20-year career in the Navy. She served as a chaplain’s assistant.

Trump, she said, is “Reagan with brass knuckles.”

Over the weekend, French’s spirits dipped as it became clear her ticket to watch Trump’s swearing in would be ceremonial only. She would have to stand in line to try for a seat at Capitol One Arena, set up for public viewing. French arranged for a car to pick her up from the military base where she was staying at 4:30 a.m.

In the end, she made it into the arena and was so moved by Trump’s speech, particularly when he talked about building up the military, that tears rolled down her cheeks.

As Trump takes office, activists on the left fear backsliding into a more racist, sexist and homophobic time, while those on the right characterize DEI programs as overreaching and divisive

At the end of Trump’s first term, he signed an executive order with a stated purpose of combating “offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping.” Subsequently revoked by successor Joe Biden, the order was part of a conservative backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Khorram hopes Trump will use federal funding as leverage to clamp down on such programs. Khorram emigrated from Iran with his family when he was 17. Speaking earlier this winter, he traced his disdain for DEI to what he observed in his birth country.

Before the 1979 revolution that established Iran as a rigid Islamic theocracy, people of different religions lived peacefully together, Khorram said. “It didn’t really matter, OK, ’till the Islamists came.”

That was the start, he said, of Iran’s “identity politics.” Authorities categorized people according to their religion as they dictated the supremacy of Islam. While the analogy to the U.S. DEI programs may not exactly fit — they espouse dismantling racial and other kinds of supremacy — Khorram sees their focus on race and gender as creating similar fissures.

During a whirlwind few days in D.C., where Khorram’s VIP status gave him access to a black-tie dinner Trump attended and a private arena suite to view the official ceremonies, he said he was glad to hear the president signal action on ending government support for DEI programs.

Trump’s pronouncement the federal government will only recognize two genders, men and women, pleased Khorram too.

Concerns about immigrants, veterans

Khorram takes pains to point out he’s an immigrant. In fact, he said immigrants are the “spirit of the GOP,” at least in King County. “We bring life. We bring energy,” he said.

Kory Hahn, who until recently served as vice-chair of the King County Republican Party, indicated the situation may be changing. Regrettably, in the eyes of Hahn, who moved to the U.S. from Korea when he was 12, the county party’s leadership is less diverse than it used to be after a reorganization last month.

But he agrees with Khorram that local Republican events are drawing more immigrants than in the past. Trump has attracted Vietnamese Americans repelled by any hint of the communist politics they fled, for instance. His wooing of religious constituencies has also played well among some Hispanic immigrants, among others.

Khorram doesn’t want immigrants to be treated as victims, as he feels Democrats sometimes do. He also makes a sharp distinction between those here legally and illegally.

He was therefore further cheered Monday by the slew of actions Trump promised on immigration, including declaring a state of emergency at the southern border and beginning the process of deporting millions of immigrants with criminal records.

Felix Vargas, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and retired foreign service officer who voted for Harris, is also watching Trump’s moves on immigration closely, but from a different perspective. “In Washington, we have a lot of undocumented people who work in agriculture,” said the Pasco resident.

“They’re not taking anybody’s jobs away. These are jobs that really no one wants, except people who are desperate for work.” Vargas worries not only about the impact of widespread deportations on them but on the local economy as well.

He especially doesn’t want to see recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program deported. DACA recipients came to the U.S. without authorization as children and have obtained renewable work permits though the Obama-era initiative.

“They are Americans in every sense of the word,” Vargas said. “They serve in our military, they teach in our schools.”

Vargas also went to D.C. to press the case for veteran benefits. He fears they might be cut in the Trump administration’s zeal for government downsizing.

If cuts affect the Department of Veterans Affairs’ bureaucracy, that’s one thing, he said. But he’d oppose reducing veteran pensions or cutting programs for disabled veterans and those with PTSD and other mental health conditions.

As he planned his trip, he said he was “in listening mode.”

What he heard before leaving D.C. Sunday to beat subfreezing temperatures left him, he said, “mildly optimistic,” at least in terms of another area of interest, foreign affairs.

Vargas talked with a State Department career officer professing confidence in Trump’s picks for the head and deputy head of the department, former Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau.

Still, he said he felt a little depressed upon seeing Saturday’s People’s March — not because of its opposition to Trump’s agenda but because it revealed “this country is as divided as ever.”

The Youngquists arranged to go to the inauguration the day Biden withdrew from the presidential race and Harris announced her candidacy. It would be a historic moment, one quite different from the eventual outcome, if a Black, Indian American woman won, they thought.

When she did not, they were shocked, and they asked each other: Should we still go?

“We talked for two minutes,” Larry Youngquist recalled. “Yeah, we have to go,” he said they resolved, seeking to make sense of what just happened.

They’ve been active in both major political parties at different points in their lives. Sandi Youngquist once worked in Democratic offices and campaigned for former President Barack Obama. Larry Youngquist, admiring widely respected moderate Republicans like former Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, served for a time as a GOP precinct committee officer.

Now, said Larry Youngquist, “our values are more on the progressive side.”

The couple doesn’t know what to expect from Trump.

For the inauguration, they had an exit strategy in case things got ugly, as they did during the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. They planned to keep on the outskirts of the crowd and wear sensible shoes. So if necessary, said Sandi Youngquist, “we can run.”

The shift indoors mooted that plan. They watched the inauguration on TV from their hotel lobby. About 50 people joined them, most loudly cheering as Trump spoke.

The Youngquists said the speech, echoing Trump’s campaign rhetoric, didn’t surprise them. It did disturb them at times, such as when the president discussed recognizing only two genders.

Trump’s promise to take back the Panama Canal struck Larry Youngquist as odd. He wondered how that squared with the president’s assurance of a peaceful world.

Sandi Youngquist skeptically viewed Trump’s theme of making America great again because, she said: “We’re already there.” Contrary to what the president and his supporters contend, the U.S. has strongest military in the world, freedom of speech and constitutional protections, she said.

The couple said they found Trump supporters they met at their hotel welcoming and friendly. The Youngquists said the big thing they learned from the inauguration was the almost cultlike belief Trump’s supporters have in him. For instance, one person they talked to credited Trump alone with the ceasefire in Gaza, discounting Biden’s efforts.

Others said they would pay as much as $10,000 to get into an event where they could catch a glimpse of Trump.

The Youngquists listened and kept their political affiliation to themselves.