Weekly Review

At a ceremony in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump, a WWE Hall of Fame inductee who has been named in at least 169 federal lawsuits, placed his hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, swore he would preserve the Constitution, and ascended to the presidency of the United States.^[1][2][3] “Amazingly,” said Trump, “it rained.”^[4] Trump delivered a sixteen-minute inaugural address, the first in American history to use the words “bleed,” “ravages,” and “carnage.”^[5] Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, who swallows at least 35 sticks of cinnamon-flavored Orbit gum a day and has tweeted for five years that Dippin’ Dots are “not the ice cream of the future,” said the inauguration’s audience, which was smaller than the previous two inaugural crowds, was the “largest audience ever, period.”^[6][7][8] The White House website published a biography of Trump that stated he had the most electoral-college votes of any Republican president since 1988, a time period encompassing only one Republican president.^[9] In a speech to 400 CIA employees, Trump, who recently tweeted that the behavior of U.S. intelligence agencies made him feel he was “living in Nazi Germany,” said that he was on their “same wavelength,” prompting applause from the audience members whom Trump had brought with him to the event.^[10][11][12] At an inaugural ball attended by the bounty hunter and reality-television star Duane “Dog” Chapman, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway punched a man in the face.^[13][14] In demonstrations across Washington, groups of protesters lit a limousine on fire and broke the windows of a Bank of America, a white supremacist who said “sure” when asked whether he liked black people was punched in the face, a man marched with two alpacas and a llama to demand better trade policies, and at least 10 journalists simultaneously photographed a trash-can fire.^{[15][16][17][18]}

Several of Trump’s associates were reported to be under investigation for having ties to Russia, and a Russian mining company minted a two-foot-wide commemorative coin featuring Trump’s portrait and the words “In Trump We Trust.”^[19][20] The Trump Administration said that it would be open to military cooperation with the Russian government, which would break current U.S. law, and Russia, which recently announced it was withdrawing its forces from Syria, signed a 49-year lease with the Syrian government guaranteeing it an air base and more berths for its warships.^[21][22] Iran warned that it would resume its nuclear program if Trump didn’t honor the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Trump has pledged to break.^[23] In one of his first executive actions, Trump backed out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have created a free-trade bloc between a dozen Pacific-Rim countries.^[24] The dollar’s value dropped in Asia, Australia said it was open to China joining the trade agreement, and China announced it was prepared to lead the world.^[25][26][27] “The Americans,” said an adviser to German chancellor Angela Merkel, “will get the Trump they elected.”^[28]

In the largest protest in U.S. history, Americans in 600 cities marched through the streets carrying signs that read, “Really?,” “Not usually a protester but geez,” “This is really bad,” “So bad even introverts are here,” “[internally screaming],” “We f#cked up bigly,” “There will be hell toupee,” “Honestly there are too many problems with this administration to adequately summarize in one sign,” “Literally everything about this is so awful that I have no idea where to even start,” “Donald Trump uses Comic Sans,” “Mike Pence likes Nickelback,” “I’ve seen sturdier cabinets at IKEA,” “Just, ugh,” “I wish this were fake news,” “Trump is an offense to human dignity,” “the gays have had it,” “my Mama don’t like Trump and she likes everyone,” “this is fucked up,” “I can’t believe I left the Soviet Union for this shit,” “I can’t believe we are still protesting this,” “this is our cuntry,” “Sorry world, we will fix this,” “if Britney can make it through 2007, we can make it through this,” “Chin up, fangs out,” “Tits forward,” “Add pumpkin spice to racism so white women will care,” “Unite the states of America,” “We shall overcomb!,” “We are the resistance!,” “free Melania!”^{[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]}

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