Hillary Clinton chuckled merrily when President Trump said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” A phalanx of Proud Boys marched past partygoers streaming into the Canadian Embassy and chanted, “Are you ready to be the 51st state?” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, shouted out to 1,500 revelers that “we were babies” in the first term but “now we can get stuff done like never before!”
Over two frigid days in Washington, there was a powerful sense of triumphalism, jubilation and gloating as Mr. Trump’s supporters poured into a fortresslike capital for his second inaugural. Temperatures and winds were so brutal that the swearing-in and Inaugural Address were moved inside.
But women still teetered on icy sidewalks in bare legs and stiletto heels on the way to packed hotel ballrooms. National Guardsmen manned streets blocked off with metal fencing and concrete barricades. The oligarchs assembled for a billionaires’ ball.
And “Y.M.C.A.,” one of Mr. Trump’s favorite songs, blared day and night from pedicabs.
Here are some pages from a reporter’s notebook.
Happy Canadians, for a While
The Canadians were elated. At a well-heated rooftop party on Monday morning at their embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue, word was out that Mr. Trump would not slap 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico as he had threatened — at least on Day 1.
“There’s relief,” said Andrew Furey, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, who was in town for the inaugural. And yet, there were those Proud Boys outside, trolling the embassy about Mr. Trump’s pay-attention-to-me call to make Canada America’s newest state.