Angst Simmers in Washington as Trump Presidency Nears
WASHINGTON — In the Virginia suburb of McLean, where the local diner is a C.I.A. breakfast hangout, General Michael V. Hayden, who ran the agency for George W. Bush, is playing career counselor these days. With President-elect Donald J. Trump attacking the intelligence community, the general says his “old tribe’’ is feeling “a special angst.”
In free-spirited Takoma Park, Md., a “nuclear-free zone” since 1983, a left-wing resistance movement is taking shape. Nadine Bloch, an activist and artist, is running pre-inaugural training on nonviolent protest — complete with mock police officers wielding rolled up newspapers as batons.
And here in the District of Columbia, where 91 percent of voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, “full-scale panic” is setting in, said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and Trump enthusiast. Leslie Harris, a liberal Democratic lawyer, uses war imagery: “I feel like my city is about to be invaded.”
Washington has always been a chameleon of a city, accustomed to remaking itself when the White House changes hands. But as Mr. Trump’s inaugural draws near, in a nation so deeply divided that it seems the political middle has entirely disappeared, perhaps no place in America feels as unsteady and on edge as the capital, which Mr. Trump calls “the swamp.”
With his 6 a.m. Twitter blasts and chaos-sowing style — and a roster of conservative Cabinet picks eager to do an about-face on President Obama’s policies — Mr. Trump has upended the city’s rhythms and jangled its nerves. The White House press corps is fighting to keep its work space in the West Wing. High-powered lobbyists worry their clients will turn up in his Twitter feed. Civil servants, many of them African-American and working class, say he knows nothing about running a bureaucracy.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/angst-simmers-in-washington-as-trump-presidency-nears/ar-AAlWw8n?li=BBnb7Kz
