The transformation of Donald Trump begins Thursday.
The freewheeling, acerbic, often vulgar and offensive maverick of the campaign trail has 70 days to become a president.
Trump will begin the process with a remarkable meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House, an encounter between antagonists who never bothered to hide their visceral dislike for one another.
After his stunning election victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump also has a dizzying list of tasks to fulfill, and the White House meeting is only the start of his hectic agenda before Inauguration Day.
First, the President-elect must make a stab at uniting the country, after a scorched-earth campaign in which he consciously tore at the nation’s gender, racial and economic fault lines to build a movement to win power. He’s practicing some unusual humility.
“I pledge to every citizen of our lands that I will be the president for the American people,” Trump said in his victory speech Tuesday. “For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, for which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so we can work together and unify our great country.”
But his challenges were on clear display Wednesday as protests broke out from Boston to Los Angeles.
Trump’s meeting with Obama promises to be one of the most awkward encounters ever between a president and his successor. The President-elect’s agenda is diametrically opposed to Obama, including the repeal of his signature health care law.
Trump built his political career and appeal to what eventually became his base with his crusade to prove that Obama was not a natural born citizen and was not therefore eligible for the presidency. Many Democrats found his antics racist and deeply offensive to the first African-American president.
Partly spurred by his contempt for Trump, Obama used the power of his office like no other president before him to make the case on the campaign trail that his potential successor was essentially un-American, unfit for the presidency and too risky to be trusted with the nuclear codes.
“The president made a forceful argument and he stands by that argument, but the time for making that argument has passed,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday. “The American people rendered their judgment, and President Obama doesn’t get to choose his successor, the American people do, and they did.”
Preserving the integrity of American democracy makes it incumbent on Obama to ensure the peaceful transition of power, despite his own deep reservations and antipathy toward his successor.
Trump is also under immediate pressure to build a relationship with Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who have often viewed him with deep skepticism but are now crucial to his agenda .
Trump must build an administration that is ready to hit the ground running January 20. And perhaps his most daunting assignment is building a national security structure from scratch, and bringing his own sketchy foreign policy and national security credentials up to speed.
Every president who walks into the Oval Office faces an adjustment to the inhuman demands of the presidency. Obama is fond of saying that only problems that no one else can solve reach the President’s desk.
But Trump is the only man ever to win the presidency with no political, diplomatic or military executive experience, so his learning curve to becoming the most powerful man in the world will be even steeper.
Trump is no longer on the campaign trail and is not therefore subject to the same pressures that a candidate faces. So in a sense, the transition allows him to reset and at least attempt to adopt a more presidential posture.
His task will be exacerbated by the fact that he appears on track to lose the popular vote to Clinton, even though he won the electoral college — a factor that undercuts any claims of a mandate.
Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a CNN contributor, said Trump needs to make amends to Americans insulted by his conduct — including African-Americans, women and Hispanics.
“I think he needs to start with an apology — honestly,” she said on CNN’s “The Lead.” Given the President-elect’s reluctance to admit he is wrong, that step at least seems unlikely.
Trump’s new audience stretches beyond Washington and the United States. US allies were alarmed by Trump’s victory, given his criticism of US alliances overseas and hazy knowledge of defense and nuclear doctrine.
Adversaries like Russia and China will already be gaming out how best they can take advantage of their inexperienced new counterpart in Washington.
While Trump has the advantage of a ready-made domestic program given Republican control of Congress, he has no such luxury when it comes to national security policy.
Trump’s foreign policy team also lacks a diplomatic heavy hitter respected abroad: speculation is mounting that he will bring in someone who is a known quantity overseas as Secretary of State — someone like Sen. Bob Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He has just over two months to staff the State Department, Pentagon, his White House National Security staff, install new leadership at the Intelligence Agencies and begin to install top diplomatic envoys overseas.
It would be a daunting task for any president. Trump is further handicapped by the fact that a huge chunk of the Republican national security establishment, alarmed by his volatile temperament and rudimentary knowledge, defected en masse to Clinton.
But the most fundamental question facing Trump may be his own temperament.
The idea that the President-elect was too erratic and volatile to be commander-in-chief was at the center of Clinton’s campaign, and many Americans and foreigners alike worry that his inauguration will usher in a period full of danger and risks.
Trump showed at times on the campaign trail that he could be disciplined. Such a demeanor will be even more crucial now because a stray word from a president who can send financial markets tumbling or send foreign armies onto red alert.
The transition period will be a time for him to try on his new role as a statesman.
The question is whether he will be the version of Trump who vowed to throw Clinton in jail or someone with a personality more becoming of a commander in chief.
“Is this the Donald Trump who wanted to ban all Muslims coming into America?” CNN contributor Matt Lewis, a conservative author, said on CNN Wednesday. “Or is this the Donald Trump that sounded a much more conciliatory last night?
He added: “I hope that he was sort of fronting a little bit to win the election and that he will actually govern in a more statesmanlike manner.”
Thousands take to the streets to protest Trump win
They chanted anti-Donald Trump slogans. They flooded city streets. They gathered near the White House, disheartened and dismayed.
“Not my President, not today,” many across the nation yelled.
In cities from Boston to Los Angeles, thousands of demonstrators gathered Wednesday night in protest of election results that mean the billionaire real estate developer will be the next president.
As many as 5,000 people were at a protest in New York, police estimated. Among the issues being yelled about outside Trump Tower were immigration and other controversial topics from the campaign.
“I came out here to let go of a lot of fear that was sparked as soon as I saw the results,” protester Nick Powers said. He said he feared Trump will support stronger stop-and-frisk policies that would put many people in prison. He was worried that Trump’s victory would embolden sexist views.
Many of the protests were in cities with large Democratic bases — in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Denver; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, Seattle and Washington.
In Chicago, people walked down a normally busy Lake Shore Drive carrying signs. Many headed to Upper Wacker Drive, where a crowd was growing near the Trump Tower. CNN’s Ryan Young estimated the throng at a few thousand people covering the street for half a mile. Many were using a vulgar chant aimed at the President-elect.
One college student showed CNN a sign that said, “I still can’t believe I have to protest for civil rights.”
“It’s been really frustrating, because as a nation we thought we had come so far but it seems like we’re taking many steps back,” another woman said, “so we want to come together to change that and make sure we keep going forward.”
In Portland, marchers chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” as they trekked through downtown. Protesters in D.C., who headed to the Trump International Hotel, shouted the same slogan. After an earlier solemn gathering at the White House a few dozen young people remained, their cries profane.
Hundred of mostly young Latino protesters marched on Los Angeles City Hall Wednesday night. As the protest grew throughout the night, protesters set on fire a piñata depicting the head of President-elect.
They chanted “I will not live in fear,” “Fight back, stand up” and “¡Si se puede!” (Spanish for “It can be done”).
Several protesters said they feared that family or friends might be deported once Donald Trump is sworn into office.
Protest against the election of Donald Trump: Clair Sheehan takes part in a protest on Wednesday against President-elect Donald Trump, in downtown Seattle.In Austin, protesters blocked a highway Wednesday afternoon. Students burned a flag on the campus of American University in Washington, and they walked out of class in high schools and colleges across the country the day after the Presidential election.
View image on Twitter
In downtown Los Angeles, high school students crowded the steps of City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. Protester Brooklyn White was holding a sign that said “Hate won’t win.” The 18-year-old voted for Hillary Clinton and was disappointed.
In downtown Los Angeles, high school students crowded the steps of City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. Protester Brooklyn White was holding a sign that said “Hate won’t win.” The 18-year-old voted for Hillary Clinton and was disappointed.“We can’t let it stop us. If he’s the President then fine, but if Donald Trump is gonna be it then he has to listen,” she said.
At Berkeley High School in California, about 1,500 students walked out of classes Wednesday morning. In Des Moines, Iowa it was hundred of high school students who left class to protest of election results. In Phoenix, about 200 students from Carl Hayden High School marched to the state Capitol in protest.
Earlier Wednesday, trash fires burned on an Oakland, California, highway as an illuminated sign in the nation’s capital proclaimed that the United States was “better than bigotry.” The Oakland Police Department said as many as 6,000 demonstrators had marched in the streets by Wednesday night.
“People are furious not just at the results of the election, but the rhetoric of Donald Trump,” Ahmed Kanna, an organizer for Social Alternative Berkeley, told CNN’s Don Lemon.
White House candlelight vigil
A candlelight vigil for Clinton supporters in front of the White House on Wednesday evening drew those who wanted to mourn their election loss.
The peaceful crowd called out “you are not alone” to over 2,600 people watching the gathering on Facebook, organizers said.
Maybelline McCoy, an immigrant from Panama, came to the vigil with her three children.
“My biggest fear is that they will be limited, that they will see people being silenced and invalidated and that I won’t be able to shield them,” she said.
Protests after the vote count
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning after the votes were counted, one member of the crowd near the White House held an upside-down American flag, alongside the LGBT rainbow flag, in silent protest.
Brian Barto, a protester who had remained at the White House after most dispersed, told CNN affiliate WJLA-TV in Washington that he was “destroyed, honestly distraught.”“Everything that has been built up has been destroyed. … America has failed (minorities).”
Latasha Wilson said she was scared about the next four years. “He doesn’t respect women, Black Lives Matter, Latinos. He’s a racist. … There are multiple things that add up,” she said of the President-elect.
Supporters celebrate
Others went to the White House late Tuesday and early Wednesday to show their support for Trump.
Nicholas Elliot, a student at Washington’s Georgetown University, said he was elated about Trump’s election.
“I feel pretty good, a year and a half process has ended and it ended my way,” the Texan told WJLA. He said he thought it was “definitely the responsibility of both parties” to unite the country.
Referencing the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union, which “translated strongly here,” he said he had no fear his candidate would lose.
“There is a hidden vote,” he said, contending people didn’t voice their true voting intentions to pollsters in case they were perceived as sexist, racist or homophobic.
Lady Gaga protests against President-elect Donald Trump outside Trump Tower in New York.
In New York on Wednesday morning, groups of Trump supporters cheered his victory outside Trump Tower. Pop star Lady Gaga, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter who had performed at the Democratic candidate’s final rally in North Carolina, stood atop a sanitation truck outside Trump Tower in New York, brandishing a sign that read: “Love trumps hate.”
Images and footage shared on social media showed dumpster fires on what was described as a stretch of Broadway, from 14th to 20th streets in the city.
At the University of Louisville in Kentucky, the base of a large-scale bronze cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker” was spray-painted with the message: Trump #BuildThatWall.”
CNN’s Paul Vercammen contributed to this story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP-Kxzk2_Xc
