Despite holding the highest office in the nation, Trump has consistently distanced himself from Washington DC both physically and ideologically. He was beaten by former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley in the District of Columbia’s Republican primary election and polled only 6.6% against Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in the general election.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump branded Washington as a “filthy and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation”. He has vowed to radically overhaul the capital, recruiting billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to slash the federal workforce, which some see as a desire to disrupt the city’s established political order.
Trump’s first presidency was marked by events that brought conflict and disruption to the streets of Washington, including holding up a bible at the site of previously dispersed George Floyd protests. He engaged with the city’s cultural and political life less than his predecessors, patronising only his own restaurant – at the Trump International hotel – and shunning traditional events such as the Kennedy Center Honors and the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
The day after the election, Tia Butler, a Washington DC resident, emailed her relatives asking who was interested in “going on a cruise or some other adventure, January 19 – 25”. For Butler, the memories of the January 6 riot in which Trump supporters violently stormed the US Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of electoral votes and encountering pro-life protesters following the 2020 election – makes her not want to be in the city during the inauguration festivities.
Initially, Butler was expecting house guests in January in hopes of a different outcome, but she will now spend the Dr Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend in California.
“I have a fundamental set of beliefs and values that differ greatly from the supporters of the president-elect, so it is best that I just remove myself,” said Butler, a human resources executive who had worked for the federal government for nearly two decades before leaving to work at a non-profit. “It says to me that we’d rather have a criminal leading our country than a person of color, or a criminal rather than a woman.”
June Williams Colman has similar sentiments. In July 2024, the Houston-based physician was in a clothing boutique in Martha’s Vineyard when she heard screaming around the television in the shop. President Joe Biden had just announced that he was halting his re-election campaign and was throwing his support behind his vice-president Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee.
“People were jumping up and down. It was such a powerful moment,” remembered Colman, 61. “It was really interesting being in Martha’s Vineyard during that time. Everyone that you ran into was so excited about it [Harris’ presidential candidacy].”
Colman was so confident about Harris’s chances that she purchased airline tickets to DC on 28 July, just a week after Biden’s announcement, in anticipation of a possible Harris inauguration.
A Harris inauguration, she said, would have been “unlike anything we had seen because of the joy, because of the number of people who were going to participate”, pointing to Harris’ connection to historically Black colleges and Black Greek organizations.
Instead of traveling to DC, Colman, who plans to get a refund for her plane tickets, will spend inauguration weekend in Lake Tahoe with her 15-year-old daughter.
“In 2016 when Hillary [Clinton] lost, we still came to DC in 2017 because they had the Women’s March,” Colman said, acknowledging the lingering political grief. “It was so exciting and I really wanted my daughter to see that. But it’s not the same now.”
